


LAND^OF-THE 
L1N6ERIN6-SN0W 



LIBRARY OF CONGRESS 




DDD1E4D5D77 



LIBRARY OF CONGRESS. 






UNITED STATES OF AMERICA. 



/ 



LAND OF THE LINGERING 
SNOW 



CHRONICLES OF A STROLLER IN 
NEW ENGLAND 
FROM JANUARY TO JUNE 



BY 



FRANK BOLLES 




co'^ 



VtilGiV)- 



OCT 30 1^^^ 




BOSTON AND NEW YORK 

HOUGHTON, MIFFLIN AND COMPANY 

<Sif)t Kitiewibe \Bm^, Cambriti0e 

1891 



/ 

Copyright, 1891, 
By FBANK BOLLES. 

Ml rights reserved. 



The Riverside Press, Cambridge, Mass., U. S. A. 
Electrotyped and Printed by H. O. Houghton & Co. 



'-O 



> ^ CONTENTS. 



-*- 



Page 

Footprints in the Snow 1 

Nature in Armor ^ 

A Tempest 12 

The Sea in a Snowstorm 18 

Two Views through Winter Sunshine ... 25 

Waverley Oaks and Bussey Hemlocks ... 31 

The First Bluebirds 38 

The Minute-Man in a Snowdrift .... 44 

The Coming of the Birds 51 

The Equinoctial on the Dunes .... 59 

The Renaissance 73 

The Vesper Song of the Woodcock ... 78 

A Trip to Highland Light 83 

The Current of Musketaquid 98 

A Bit of Color HO 

The Conquest of Pegan Hill 115 

Wood Ducks and Bloodroot 122 

A Voyage to Heard's Island 130 

A Forest Anthem 149 

The Bittern's Love Song 159 

Warbler Sunday 165 

Rock Meadow at Night 176 

The Secrets of the Meadow 181 

Wachusett . 190 

In the Wren Orchard 198 

Chocorua 208 



LAND OF THE LINGERING SNOW. 



FOOTPRINTS IN THE SNOW. 

Sunday, the eleventh day of the new year, 
was what most people would call a good day to 
stay in the house. The face of New England 
winter was set. No smiling sky relieved its 
grimness, no soft breeze promised a season of 
relenting. The notes of the college bell were 
muffled and the great quadrangle was deep with 
snow, as I left Old Cambridge behind me and 
sought the hills of Arlington three miles or 
more to the north. Slowly climbing the 
heights, after my car ride, I looked back at the 
world I had left. The sky was a mass of dull 
gray clouds, with a copper-colored spot where 
the sun was hiding. Boston and Cambridge lay 
under a pall of smoke and dun-colored vapor. 
The broken ridges from Belmont to the Middle- 
sex Fells were buried deep in snow, the soft 
whiteness of which was interrupted by patches 
of dark pines, dotted with stiff cedars, or shaded 



2 . LAND OF THE LINGERING SNOW. 

by the delicate etcliing of birches and elms. 
The air was in that condition which favors the 
carriage of distant sounds. I heard the rumble 
of trains on the Fitchburg, Massachusetts Cen- 
tral and Albany railways on the one hand and 
of those on the Northern roads on the other. 
Now and then the tooting whistle of a train 
sounded like the hooting of a mammoth owl. 

Entering the woods, I found written upon the 
snow the records of those who had travelled 
there before me. A boy with his sled had been 
across to a pond in the hollow. A dog had fol- 
lowed him, running first to one side, then to the 
other. Further on I struck another track. The 
prints were smaller than the dog's, round, and 
in a single line, spaced quite evenly, like those 
of a fox. Somebody's cat had been hunting on 
her own account. In an open space, bunches 
of golden rod and asters had been pulled to 
pieces, and all around their stalks the footprints 
of small birds, perhaps goldfinches or redpolls, 
were thick. Not far away the snow on an open 
hillside was pencilled by the rising stems of 
barberry bushes. From the pine woods to these 
bushes numerous tiny paths led. The most 
dainty feet had printed their story there. The 
journeys seemed to have been made in dark- 
ness, for the paths made queer curves, loops, 
false starts into the open pasture and quick re- 



FOOTPRINTS IN THE SNOW. 3 

turns to the woods. The barberry bushes had 
been found, however, and were thoroughly en- 
snared in the tracks. The mice which formed 
them had made holes in the snow near the stems 
of the bushes, and these holes led throuofh lono- 
tunnels down to the ground and possibly into it. 
Among the pitch pines, old orchards, and chest- 
nut trees squirrel tracks were countless. Most 
of them were those of the red squirrel, but in 
deeper woods I found records of gray squirrels 
as well. Along frozen brooks, where alders, 
willows, privet, and rosebushes were thick, the 
small brown rabbits had been feeding and pay- 
ing moonlight visits to each other. In an or- 
chard I found a place where a crow had alighted 
and marched about with long strides. Most in- 
teresting of all were the hurried tracks of a 
flock of birds which had been feedin^: on bar- 
berries, juniper and privet berries. They had 
been disturbed by a dog and had skurried 
through the thicket, their sharp toes printing 
innumerable "crow's feet " in the snow. What 
were they ? I pushed on to see, and soon started 
a flock of fifteen quail from a dark grove of 
pines. Later I found one cuddled up in a hol- 
low in the snow under a juniper, eating the ber- 
ries over her head. I nearly stepped upon the 
bush before she flew. 

Descending into a ravine filled with ruddy 



4 LAND OF THE LINGERING SNOW. 

willows, privet, and rose bushes gay with their 
red hips, I heard a note which made me halt 
and listen. Yes, a robin. The sides of the 
ravine were clothed with savins, the ridges were 
crowned by tall pines. Rose hips and sumac 
seeds, barberries, privet and juniper berries 
furnished food, and the sun is always warm — 
when it shines. A soft rain began to fall, and 
it loosed the tongues of the birds. Chickadees 
called from tree to hedge. Golden-crested king- 
lets lisped to each other in the cedars. A dozen 
crows circled over the high pines, cawing discon- 
tentedly, and the robin's note sounded from 
three or four quarters at once. I gained the top 
of the ridge and looked across a pasture. In a 
branching oak were several birds. As I drew 
near, others flew in from neighboring savins and 
bunches of barberry bushes. They were robins. 
In all, thirty-six flew into the oak and then went 
off in a noisy flock as I reached the tree. Their 
plumage was much lighter than in summer. The 
rain fell faster and I left the pasture, homeward 
bound. The last I saw of the pasture hillside it 
was sprinkled with robins running back and 
forth on the snow, picking up privet berries. 
They were as jolly as in cherry time. 

While recrossing pasture and field, swamp 
and thicket, I noticed countless black specks 
upon the snow. They moved. They were 



FOOTPRINTS IN THE SNOW. 5 

alive. Wherever a footprint, a sharp edge of 
drift, or a stone wall broke the monotony of the 
snow surface, these black specks accumulated, 
and heaped themselves against the barrier. For 
miles every inch of snow had from one to a 
dozen of these specks upon it. What were 
they? Snowfleas or springtails (^achoreutes nivi- 
cola^, one of the mysteries of winter, one of the 
extravagances of animal life. Fortunately they 
prefer the cold face of the snow to a life of para- 
sitic persecution. 

As I caught a homeward-bound electric car, 
I looked back at the ridges of Arlington with 
gratitude and admiration. They made a land- 
scape of ermine, a soft blending of light and 
dark. The falling rain, snowbound farms, savin- 
dotted hillsides, bluish belts of woodland, deli- 
cate tracery of elm branches ; all mingled to 
form a background for reverie, a gentle good-by 
to a day of rest. 



NATURE IN ARMOR. 

Nature does not always drop her cloak of 
ermine when she buckles on her armor. She 
often covers her soft snow garments with icy mail 
and meets the dawn with every hillside a shield 
and every branch of oak a sword. She was thus 
girded and armed on Sunday, January 18, 1891, 
as I sought the Arlington hills at the hour when 
the air of Suffolk and Middlesex was throbbing 
with the music of church bells. A gentle east 
wind — for even Massachusetts east winds can 
be gentle when they try — carried in slanting 
lines against the hills and trees a steady fall of 
cold rain. It had been falling so for over twelve 
hours, till level snow, fences, walls, weeds by the 
wayside, shrubs, orchards, elms in the meadows, 
savins on the hillsides, and belts of woods on the 
ridge-crests were all sheathed in clear ice, which 
measured, on an average, a quarter of an inch 
in thickness. 

As I mounted through the open fields toward 
the heights, I wondered what the birds were, do- 
ing in the cold rain, with every twig ice-coated, 
and every berry shut up in thick crystal. Where 



NATURE IN ARMOR. 7 

were the crows, the chickadees, and above all, 
the adventurous robms ? " Here I am," a robin 
seemed to say from the roadside, and at the 
same instant I saw a bird fly from a dense tangle 
of briers, bushes, cedars and tall maples, to the 
highest branch of a tree, shake himself thor- 
oughly, and then give the familiar robin signal of 
alarm and inquiry. He was answered by a sec- 
ond bird, and presently three of them flew over 
my head and down the hill towards a grove of 
pines. I had a clear view of them through my 
opera-glass. 

A few steps further on I came to a white birch- 
tree, bent by the ice till its head rested in a 
snowbank on the opposite side of the road from 
its but. It formed an ice-screen thirty feet 
long and nine feet high, directly across the road. 
The tree measured nearly three feet in circum- 
ference at its base. Near by a grove of white 
birches had become a shapeless tangle of ice-wires 
and cables. The eye could not separate any one 
tree from the mass, and the tops of all were rest- 
ing upon the snow. The road was lined with 
bleached asters and goldenrod. Not only were 
their stems ice-hung, but their pale, flower-like 
involucres were embedded in nodding balls of 
ice, half an inch in diameter. So delicate were 
these mock flowers and so erect and perfect their 
form within the crystal, that it seemed certain 



8 LAND OF THE LINGERING SNOW. 

they must have been first embraced by a freez- 
ing mist as gentle and caressing as a ray of sun- 
shine. The same ice-kiss had rested upon the 
bunches of red barberries, the dark berries of 
the privet, and the sticky, red, cone-shaped 
masses of the sumac fruit. Even the dead, rus- 
set leaves hanging from the oaks had a sheet of 
ice clinging to them which, when slipped off, 
showed their form and veinings. 

Entering the pine woods where I had previ- 
ously seen quail, I found the trees in trouble. 
The great pines were loaded down with ice, and 
many a branch had broken and fallen under its 
weight. The surface of the snow was strewn 
with twigs and branches of every size. A strange 
roar of falling ice and twigs filled the woods, 
now and then emphasized by the crash of some 
greater fall. I found the tracks of one quail 
and of a rabbit, made doubtless Saturday 
evening while the snow was still soft ; but other- 
wise the face of the snow told no tales. It was 
smooth and shining, as though no dainty feet of 
mice and squirrels had ever pressed upon it. 
There were squirrels at work, however. Under 
one pitch-pine I found a pint of cone chips 
freshly strewn. Half a mile distant I surprised 
a red squirrel busy in an old chestnut-tree which 
had succumbed to its awful burden of ice and 
fallen mangled in the snow. He fled from me 



NATURE IN ARMOR. 9 

and bounded up the trunk of an oak, but he 
reckoned without the ice, and when part way up 
lost his grip and fell back upon the crust below, 
a very much mortified squirrel. 

In dense growths of pitch-pines and savins I 
came across six flocks of chickadees, in all per- 
haps twenty of the merry little birds. They 
seemed to keep dry, and by working on the 
under and westerly sides of the branches found 
food not covered by ice. In one of the flocks 
were two little brown creepers who were unable 
to make spirals or zigzags round the tree-trunks, 
as is their frequent practice, but who seemed 
happy in hitching straight up the trunks of the 
pines and the oaks. The chickadees, creepers 
and crows, as well as the robins, were very talk- 
ative. The only other bird seen was a small 
hawk, which sailed silently over the snow in a 
secluded pasture. 

About two o'clock I gained the crest of a high 
ridge from which I could see many miles of 
snow-covered country. The sky was a cold gray- 
ish white ; the pines and cedars looked almost 
black. Against the sky the ice-covered, leafless 
trees were a darker gray than the clouds, but 
against the evergreens or in masses by them- 
selves they were ashes-of -roses color and wonder- 
fully soft in tone. Looking across a sloping 
pasture at a swamp filled with elms and willows, 



10 LAND OF THE LINGERING SNOW. 

they seemed to be a mass of dark stems with 
their tops shrouded in pale smoke through which 
the faintest possible fire-glow permeated. I 
suppose the color came from the reddish bark 
of the twigs. Just then the sun found a rift 
in the rushing clouds, and for a single minute 
poured his glory upon the crystal world below. 
Every tint changed. Every atom of ice re- 
sponded, flashing to the touch of light, but the 
east wind hurried forward fresh mists from the 
ocean and the sunlight vanished. Below me 
hundreds of small trees trailed their tops upon 
the snow. It seemed as though some muezzin 
of the ice-world had called them to their prayers. 
Farther away were acres of scattered pitch-pines, 
every bunch of whose needles was a drooping 
pompon of heavy ice. As I looked at them 
through the thickly falling sleet they seemed to 
march in ranks across the fields of snow, their 
heads bent from the wintry storm, despair in 
their attitude. " The retreat from Moscow," I 
said, and hoped that the day of judgment against 
the weak among the trees would not be followed 
by a night of tempestuous wrath against the 
whole ice-bound forest. 

The wind, gentle as it seemed, was too strong 
for some trees. Once I heard a report like a 
cannon, and turned to see an old willow forty 
feet high plunge into the snow. At another 



NATURE JN ARMOR. 11 

time a long branch of an elm at which I was 
looking slowly bent lower and lower, and then 
broke midway with a crack and swung toward 
the ground. I raised a prostrate cedar bush, 
whose height was about seven feet, and found 
that its load of ice seemed to weigh thirty pounds. 
If this were so, what must the burden of the great 
trees have been ? Tons, perhaps. Yet the oaks 
did not seem to bend an inch. Their stiff heads 
were raised straight toward the sky, and their 
immovable arms bristled with icicles. 

About an hour before sunset I pointed my 
course downward, sighting for the tower of Me- 
morial Hall rising black against the distant sky. 
Much ice had fallen from the trees since the 
forenoon, and there was a ceaseless roar of fall- 
ing fragments as I passed through the strips of 
woodland. The temperature had risen enough 
to loosen the ice armor, and everything from 
asters to elm-tops was casting it oif. 



A TEMPEST. 

Ox the afternoon of Saturday, January 24, 
wliile roaming over tlie hills between Arlington 
anil Medford, I made up my mind not to spend 
the next day in the woods. Nature seemed to 
have become prosaic, almost dull. I saw one 
flow. — no other tenant of the woods. The snow 
had been washed away and the ice which re- 
mained was stained. The air was heavy with 
the breath of long-forgotten cabbage-leaves. 
Farmers were at work in their plowed lands, 
stirring up other odors equally obnoxious. Even 
the fields were unpleasant to walk over on ac- 
count of their alternate patches of ice and pasty 
nuid. But Sunday morning before sunrise the 
wind shifted to the northeast and changed a 
drizzling rain into a furious snowstorm, and by 
noon, when 1 reached the first hiU-top above 
Arlington, the storm was at its height. The air 
was in a fury. Laden with great masses of 
flakes it bore thorn in horizontal lines over field, 
an.l pastures, luuling them against every obsta^ 
•l''. and whitening even the window jxanes of 
liouses facing eastward. The blast was as unin- 



s 



A TEMPEST. 13 

termittent in its pressure as natural forces can 
be ; yet it seemed to excite vibration and rhythm 
in all it touched. The tops of the pines fell and 
rose, the branches moved forward and back, the 
roar of the wind pulsated and the soft surface 
of the snow was not even, but broken into tiny 
waves. In the pine woods the wind was less 
violent, but the passing snow seemed like vibrat- 
ins" white lines rather than flakes. As I stood 
in the pines and looked northeast, every tree was 
black against a distance of on-coming white 
ras-e. As I looked southwest every tree was 
white, finely outlined in black, against a retreat- 
ino- mass of colorless motion. If I looked south- 
east the trees were black and white, and if north- 
west they were white and black, and whichever 
way I looked the air was surging on, laden with 
the bewildered and bewildering snow. 

Pushing on I entered a deep and rocky gorge. 
Possibly Verestchagin's brush could indicate the 
absolute whiteness overlaid upon the less abso- 
lute white of that mysteriously beautiful spot. 
Certainly nothing else could. Every rock, bush, 
trunk, limb, branchlet, twig and leaf-bud was 
covered with the clinging snow. Beyond was an 
oak wood. The inelastic ice of last Sunday failed 
to bend these stubborn trees, but the wet, sticky 
snow had overcome them. Dozens of slender 
young oaks, thirty feet in height, were bent to 



14 LAM> OF THE LINGERING SNOW. 

the grouiul. This gave a hint of what the con- 
dition of the pitch-pines and cedars would be, 
in spots sheltered from the wind, and I hurried 
on to see them. The walking was heavy. Early 
in the afternoon, when the storm abated, just 
nine inches of snow had fallen on a level. Pass- 
ing through the woods, where I had seen quail 
two weeks ago, but where now no sign of them 
was to be found, I came out into the old pasture, 
thickly overgrown with savin, pitch-pine and 
barberries. Here and there something which 
resembled a tree remained, but the greater part 
of the growth had been suppressed. There were 
rounded masses which looked like sheep in the 
snow, and there were arched stems from which 
depended balls and branches of snow resembling 
boxing-gloves, cauliflowers, toy rabbits and lambs 
and other unpoetical objects. In most cases the 
top of the pine or savin could not be distin- 
guished from its base. 

At the foot of the hill was a cedar swamp. 
Entering, I could readily imagine myself in the 
Luray Caverns. A floor of pure white sup- 
ported an endless series of white columns, beyond 
which were botryoidal masses of white rising to 
a roof of white. IMinoled with the more reoular 
forms were snarls and tangles of snow serpents, 
and shafts and pinnacles as varied in form as the 
stalagmites of the limestone caves. Later I was 



A TEMPEST. 15 

in one of these enchanting places when the sun 
came out and the zenith was left free from clouds. 
The effects were so beautiful and striking that, 
although words give but a hint of them, they 
are ineffaceable in memory. Through the swamp 
runs a small stream. As the day was compara- 
tively warm no ice encumbered the clear water. 
At one point it spread out over a broad bed of 
mud, from which rose a thick growth of grass, 
watercress and ranunculus. All three plants 
were vivid green and offered a strange contrast 
to the arabesque of snow which framed the 
brook. 

Wild as was the storm and stimulating as 
were its direct buffeting and indirect effect of 
form and color, the day was as remarkable on 
another account as it was for the tempest. I 
saw eighty-five birds, representing nine species. 

Several times I heard crows, flying through 
the driving snow, calling to each other in its con- 
fusion. In the pines at the summit of the first 
high hill were two little brown creepers flying 
from trunk to trunk and exploring busily the 
bark on the sheltered side of the trees. When 
they left a tree the storm whirled them away like 
dry leaves, but they promptly headed toward 
the wind and sped back under the lee of some 
sheltering tree to its but, the point where their 
explorations always begin. They kept track 



16 LAND OF THE LINGERING SNOW. 

of each other by frequent attenuated squeaks. 
Chickadees were everywhere, and very noisy. 
They worked quite as much on snow-covered 
twiofs as on the sheltered side of branches. In 
the cedar swamp they popped in and out of snow 
caverns among the branches, often tipping over 
great piles of snow and dodging them with a 
jolly "chick-a-dee-dee-dee." In this swamp a 
single tree-sparrow appeared among the branches 
of a big cedar and looked with evident amaze- 
ment upon my snow-covered form. Here, too, I 
saw and heard the first robins of the day flying 
and signalling among the tops of some of the 
larger cedars, and near by in a bunch of pines, 
just above the swamp, three golden-crested king- 
lets made merry in the sunlight which succeeded 
the storm. A solitary goldfinch undulated over 
me in an open pasture, singing the first note or 
two of his summer song, and a nuthatch passed 
close by me on my homeward walk. 

But the great display of birds came in the 
middle of the afternoon, at the time that the 
clouds were breaking and the wind was working 
out of the east. I was crossing a high sloping 
pasture with a cedar swamp at its base and a 
fringe of large cedars round its edge, when, strik- 
ing a patch of concealed ice, my feet flew from 
under me, and I found myself on my back in 
the snow. Looking into the sky, I saw a flock 



A TEMPEST. IT 

of at least twenty robins flying overhead. They 
came from the swamp and stopj^ed in the fringe 
of cedars to frolic and feed. Suddenly a flock 
of smaller birds joined them, and by the aid of 
my glass I discovered that they were cedar-birds. 
For twenty minutes or more this company of 
fully fifty birds romped in the savin tops, as 
they do in cherry-trees in summer, the screams 
of the robins being incessant. Many of the 
robins came near enough for me to scrutinize 
their plumage closely. I saw none but male 
birds among them. The two flocks vanished as 
suddenly as they came, and I could find no trace 
of either, although I searched and waited for 
them more than an hour. These birds were 
seen on precisely the same spot as the large flock 
of robins observed January 11. 

Although I did not leave the woods and pas- 
tures until sunset with its exquisite tints had 
come, I saw no footprints of any kind in the 
snow. I wished that I could linger until even- 
ing and follow the soft tread of rabbits and 
mice, the moon meanwhile pouring her light 
into the enchantment of those groves of snow- 
encumbered trees. 



THE SEA IN A SNOWSTORM. 

Februaky came in under the guise of May. 
The sky of Sunday, the first, was wonderfully 
bhie ; its air mild, often more than mild ; its 
clouds were like the pictures in my old physical 
geography. I could almost see the mystic words 
cimis, cumulus, stratus, written in the heavens. 
Tempted by the mock spring I extended my 
walk beyond its usual limits, infringed on Lex- 
ington, and from the heights of Waverley sur- 
veyed miles of glistening hillsides to the north 
and west, and crowded cities to the south and 
east. Every hollow was a pool, and every gla- 
cial furrow in the hills a brook. The cabbagfes 
were reasserting their rights to the farmlands 
and the air appurtenant thereto. 

The birds revelled in the warm sunshine, fly- 
ing for the love of flying, and calling loudly to 
each other for the sake of calling. The crows 
spoke loudest and the chickadees most often. On 
a sunny bank a large flock of goldfinches were 
frcding among the weeds and grasses. I counted 
fifty of them, and several flew away before the 
census was finished. They were singing enouo-h 



THE SEA IN A SNOWSTORM. 19 

of their sweet song to suggest the summer. 
Once during the clay I heard the "phoebe note " 
of the chickadee, and twice I had the satisfaction 
of hearing crows " gobble." They do not often 
make this sound. It suggests somewhat the 
gobbling of a turkey-cock. So warm, thawing, 
and genial was this day that one had to be pes- 
simistic to realize that it was only a mocking 
grin on the mask of winter and not a smile on 
the lips of spring. 

But Sunday, February 8, showed winter in 
his true colors again. The day was, as regards 
snow-laden trees and drifted roads, a duplicate 
of the last Sunday in January. Instead of en- 
joying the snow pictures in the woods and pas- 
tures of Arlington, I traversed Crab Alley, 
Bread and Milk Streets, and that meandering 
marvel of old Boston, Batterymarcli Street, and 
gained the harbor front at Rowe's Wharf. 
Some of these snow-covered haunts of trade 
were as free from footprints as the savin 
swamps of Arlington. In Crab Alley I came 
to tracks in the snow which made me wonder 
whether some of the quail from the Parker 
House toast had not escaped alive. Dainty 
little steps crossed and recrossed the narrow 
lane, and formed a dense network of converging 
paths at the back door of a small chop-house. 
As I approached, two tame doves flew noisily 



20 I.A^'I) OF THE LJXGERING SNOW. 

from lirliind the barrel which graced the door- 
sto)). and several English s^Darrows swung from 
a tek'i)houe wire overhead. 

I looked up into the iron caps of the electric 
light lanii)s to see whether the sparrows had 
built in tliem. They had. In Boston and sev- 
eral atljoining cities the major part of these 
iron witch-caps contain sparrows' nests. Even 
the lamps which are suspended over the streets 
and drawn in daily by the linemen are not dis- 
thiinod by the birds. 

From the deck of the Janus-natured ferry- 
boat, which was pausing for the time between 
trips to the Revere Beach cars, I looked out 
upon a chilly sky and sea. The waters were 
restless, the wind fierce and cold, the snow- 
flakes stinging. At anchor lay a large steamer, 
black and thin. The odd gearing at her stern 
showed that she was an ocean cable steamer. 
Beyond her was a four-masted schooner. I 
wondered what her sailors called her fourth 
mast. Suddenly my wandering eyes were fixed 
in astonishment upon a jaunty form floating on 
the water within less than fifty feet of the ferry- 
boat. It had emerged from the cold and tossing 
waters with a bounce, shaken itself, and begun 
a bobbing career in the daylight and snow- 
flakes. Pop ! Down went its head, up went its 
tail and feet and it was gone again. During 



THE SEA IN A SNOWSTORM. 21 

fifteen minutes it bobbed up six times in the 
same spot, staying afloat each time from fifteen 
to thirty seconds, and below about two minutes. 
It was black above, snowy white below, and 
formed in the likeness of a duck. It was a 
whistler, a duck common in the harbor and 
along our coast in winter. While diving, it was 
probably breakfasting upon small shell-fish 
found on the bottom. 

On the way across to East Boston I saw 
seven or eight more whistlers and over fifty 
herring-gulls, many of them in the dark plum- 
age peculiar to the immature birds. Twenty 
minutes later I stood on the narrow strip of 
sand left between the poplar walk in front of 
the Point of Pines Hotel and the angry ocean. 
The wind was northeast, and blowing a gale. 
The tide had turned half an hour before, but it 
was still unusually high. Behind me the Sau- 
gus marshes were wholly submerged. A few 
haystacks alone broke the monotony of gray 
water, foam and scudding snow. To the north 
ought to have been seen distant Lynn, but the 
eye was met only by stinging snowflakes and 
cold wind. My train, before it had gone an 
eighth of a mile, had been swallowed up in steam 
and hurrying masses of snow. Where was Na- 
hant ? There was not a trace of it. The hun- 
gry waves broke ten ranks deep upon the flat 



22 LAXD OF THE LINGERING SNOW. 

sands across which they roared; but beyond 
thoni was no land, — only the fury of gray and 
white hanging above a hissing, greenish gray 
and white below. The sand was brown, not a 
warm ])rown, but a cold, shining, grayish brown 
with no kindness in it. 

There was nothing in the whole world which 
my eye could reach to suggest warmth or happi- 
ness. True, there were the empty buildings 
with padlocked doors among the snow-covered 
trees, but they were more desolate and soul-chill- 
ing than anything in nature. I walked among 
them until wearied by the mockery of their 
signs and broken paraphernalia. Hideous ki- 
osks, whose blue and yellow paint was partly 
covered by the white pity of the storm, told in 
glaring letters of " Ice Water," " Red Hot Pop 
Corn," " Sunshades and Fans," and " Clam 
Chowder." The wind shrieked through their 
cracks and pelted wot snow against their win- 
dows. In the amphitheatre where spectacular 
plays are given on summer evenings the tide 
dabbled with the rusty wheels of a sheet-iron 
car marked "Apache." Beyond it, canvas 
mountains and canons were swaying and creak- 
ing in the storm, their ragged edges humming 
in the wind. A sign offered "Seats for 50 
cents, children 25." The seats were softly 
cushioned by six inches of snow, but the idle 



THE SEA IN A SNOWSTORM. 23 

summer crowd had been blown away by the 
winter's breath. Only a flock of a dozen crows 
lent life to the arena. 

A train emerged from the storm. I could see 
its dark outlines ; its torn column of steam ; 
the swift motion of its many wheels, — then it 
was gone, engulfed in the dizzy vibration of the 
snow, its voice unheard amid the greater voices 
of the sky and sea. The tide was going down 
as I started towards home on the hard shining 
sand of Crescent Beach. I think at least two 
hundred herring-gulls passed by me, flying 
slowly against the gale and keeping over the 
water, but parallel to the beach and about a 
hundred yards from it. They were silent. 
Their strong wings beat against the storm. 
Now and then one plunged into the foam of a 
breaking wave, or glided for a second along the 
trough of the sea. They did not seem like 
true birds, beings of the same race as humming- 
birds, sweet -voiced thrushes, or keen-witted 
chickadees. They were rather creations of the 
salt waves and ocean tempests ; cold-blooded, 
scaly things, incapable of those loves and fears, 
songs and quaint nesting ways of the birds of 
field and forest. Near Oak Island a flock of 
four snow buntings, which had been feeding 
among the bunches of seaweed, rose at my ap- 
proach and flew toward and past me up the 



24 LAND OF THE LINGERING SNOW. 

beach. They are among the most beautiful of 
our winter visitors, their white and brown plum- 
age being a sight always welcome to the eyes of 
those who love the birds. At intervals flocks of 
English sparrows rose from the seaweed and 
shunned me. There seems to be no form of 
vegetable food-supply upon which our native 
birds depend, that this ravenous, non-migratory 
pest does not devour. 

From Point of Pines to Crescent Beach sta- 
tion the thunder of the breakers and the rush of 
the wind and snow were ceaseless. The storm 
hurried me along in its strong embrace and drove 
its chill through me. The tide had left the 
marshes, and the snow had claimed them. As 
the waves retreated from the beach the snow 
stuck to the gleaming pebbles, the snaky bits of 
kelp and the purple shells. Where two hours 
before, at high tide, the waves had dashed foam 
fifty feet into the air, now the breakwaters and 
the heaps of shingle and seaweed were covered 
with white from the drippings of the great roof 
of sky. 

The whistlers were still in the harbor at three 
o'clock, but most of the gulls had gone. Snow 
clung to decks, masts, yards, furled sails and 
rigging. It whitened the water-front of the 
city, purified the docks, and made even Crab 
Alley seem picturesque as I ploughed through it 
homeward bound. 



TWO VIEWS THROUGH WINTER SUN- 
SHINE. 

Saturday and Sunday, the middle days 
of February, were filled to the brim with spar- 
kling winter sunshine. The heavens were swept 
clean of clouds by a rush of cold diy air from 
the birthplace of the Great Glacier. The 
ground was like granite, and was well covered 
with the snow that crunches under foot like pul- 
verized quartz. 

I spent Saturday afternoon on the highest 
part of the Belmont-Arlington ridge, and the 
world, seen from those wind-swept heights, 
seemed made of cleaner, brighter stuff than 
when touched on the flats below. There are 
clear days in summer, but they are not so abso- 
lutely clear as the clearest days in winter. I 
never saw a more perfectly transparent air than 
that which raced across New England on that 
Saturday. The vision was not checked by dis- 
tance or by vapor ; only by the curve of Mother 
Earth's cheek. 

Looking eastward from the heights, the eye 
passed over the Fell country of Medford and 



26 LAND OF THE LINGERING SNOW. 

Stoneliam and the marshes of the Saugus to the 
irregular line of Massachusetts Bay. Long 
Beach, running out from Lynn to Nahant, was 
dazzlingiy white against the pure blue of the sea. 
Little Nahant, Egg Rock, Nahant and Winthrop 
Head, all snow-covered, stood out in bold relief 
against the even-tinted water. Between them 
several schooners appeared now and then work- 
ing up the coast, the sunlight striking full 
against their sails. High intervening land cut 
off a view of the wooded and rocky Beverly 
shore ; but the Dan vers Asylum could be 
plainly seen, like a great feudal castle, crowning 
one of the highest ridges. 

Southward a nest of cities rested on the fork 
of the Charles and the Mystic. The chilled 
breath of half a million people hung over them 
and their crowded homes, but it did not obscure 
the picture of the harbor with its forts, islands, 
and moving sails, nor the more distant pano- 
rama of the Neponset Valley and Hull, Hing- 
ham, and the Scituate shore. This view of 
Boston and its densely populated neighbors has 
a strange fascination about it. There is little 
beauty in its blending of roofs, chimneys, tele- 
graph poles, church spires, flashing window- 
panes and bits of white steam or darker smoke, 
yet in spite of its distance and silence it has the 
mystery of life about it. From a mountain-top 



TWO VIEWS THROUGH WINTER SUNSHINE. 27 

the eye may roam over granite peaks, serried 
ranks of spruce forest, undulating groves of 
pines and birches, green intervales and snug 
farmhouses, finding in them a restful charm, 
a song of sweet New England calm. In this 
mass of distant houses, factories, grain ele- 
vators, stores, wharves, churches, marked here 
and there by historic outlines like Bunker Hill 
Monument, the golden dome of the State 
House, Memorial Hall and Mount Auburn 
Tower, there is something which stirs and stim- 
ulates rather than soothes, something which re- 
calls the toil, sorrow, self-sacrifice and eternal 
restlessness of society, and the ever-present duty 
of the individual toward it. The mountain 
view lulls one's conscience ; the sight of this 
nest of cities arouses it to action. 

Westward the view from the heights was 
monotonous. Low ridges succeeded each other 
for many miles, holding in their hollows towns, 
snow-covered farming lands, broken bits of oak 
or pine forest, and patches of ice on pond or 
meandering river. But northward the eye found 
much to rest upon. Along the limits of Middle- 
sex could be seen the valley of the Merrimac. 
Then came the border towns of New Hampshire, 
and beyond them the peaks and rounded sum- 
mits which are the pride of Jaffrey, Dublin. 
Peterborough, Temple, and Lyndeborough. 



28 LAND OF THE LINGERING SNOW. 

From Wachusett on the left to the Uncanoo- 
nucs on the right the horizon was roughened 
by the mountains of the Monadnock group, 
snow-crusted and flashing in the sunshine. They 
recalled boyhood days and adventures. A race 
from a bull on Monadnock, a moonlight climb 
on Lyndeborough, a thunder-storm on Pinnacle, 
a July picnic on Joe English hill. 

On the way home I saw a flock of about 
twenty cedar-birds in the same pasture where I 
saw them on January 25. They were cold and 
listless, allowing me to approach them closely 
enough to see the scarlet wax on their wing- 
feathers. Two of them were eating barberries 
which they picked one by one while clinging 
head-downwards on the bending stems. The 
robins, I learned from a^ fellow-observer, had 
been seen not only that day, but every day for a 
month, on their favorite feeding-ground. The 
flock varies in size, he said, from twenty to fifty. 
As I hurried along over the snow in a very 
windy fl.eld a mouse scampered away from one 
bunch of grasses to another and plunged into 
his hole. His doorway was well protected by a 
large bunch of dried grass. 

Sunday I took an early train for Readville, 
crossed the pretty triple-arch bridge over the 
Neponset, and climbed to the snowy crest of 
Blue Hill. Although the hill is nearly three 



TWO VI£WS THROUGH WINTER SUNSHINE. 29 

hundred feet hiofher than Arlinoton Heijrhts, 
its view seemed to me less attractive. It is 
three miles farther from the cities ; fifteen miles 
farther from the New Hampshire line, and in 
the centre of a country less picturesque in 
formation than that of the Middlesex Fells. 
Moreover, a northwest wind, which is the one 
most likely to accompany clear winter weather, 
carries the smoke of Boston in such a direction 
as to injure the Blue Hill view, while it im- 
proves that from Arlington. 

As I looked down upon the Neponset 
meadows, Ponkapog Pond and Great Poncl, I 
saw moving black specks which reminded me 
of the amusing little snow-fleas. They were 
skaters, enjoying the ideal weather for their 
graceful exercise. Passing Governor's Island 
and heading for Broad Sound was a four- 
masted schooner under full sail. Not a bird 
was to be seen on the hill. The top is covered 
with scrub-oak, which is replaced on the slopes 
by small nut-trees, oak saplings, a few pines, 
birches and maples. There seemed to be no 
food for any kind of winter bird. In the estates 
below, near the triple-arch bridge, I saw crows, 
chickadees, two tree - sparrows and a downy 
woodpecker. 

As I capie back to and through the city by 
an afternoon train I wondered which was less 



30 LAND OF THE LINGERING SNOW. 

wholesome for the eye of man, the dingy 
monotony of dirty white houses which one 
used to see in suburban streets, or the nause- 
ating combinations of yellows, greens, cheap 
reds and discouraged blues which are now the 
fashion. 



WAVERLEY OAKS AND BUSSEY HEM- 
LOCKS. 

A FEW rods beyond the railway station in 
Waverley the tracks of the Fitchburg and Mas- 
sachusetts Central roads cross a meadow through 
which Beaver Brook flows on its way to the 
Charles. In this meadow the towns of Belmont, 
Watertown and Waltham find a common cor- 
ner, and here stand the Waverley oaks. Some 
of these ancient trees grow on the level land 
through which the brook has cut its channel, 
but most of them rise from the narrow glacial 
ridges which project into or border the meadow. 
There are few places near Boston which welcome 
spring earlier than this moist and sunny corner. 
Here early spring birds are found, and many of 
the choicest flowers flourish. Saturday, Febru- 
ary 21, was a misty, moisty day with gray skies, 
wet snow and rain-laden air. Beaver Brook 
meadow was as wet as a meadow can be without 
changing its name, and the brook itself was 
more than knee-deep. 

The meadow, that afternoon, yielded to me 
the first flower of spring. It is true I had seen 



32 LAND OF THE LINGERING SNOW. 

a golden crocus bud before leaving the city, but 
it was under the shelter of a well-warmed, south- 
facing house, and had been covered with a 
straw blanket all winter. This flower of the 
swamp had taken care of itself on the edge of a 
cold spring filled with bright green watercress. 
It had no warm wall to shelter it, no blanket 
save the black mud. It was as large as a tulip, 
and its spots and stripes of purple and greenish 
yellow made it quite consjjicuous in its meadow 
bed. Pulling o23en the fleshy lips of its highly 
scented spathe, its yellow pollen was scattered 
in all directions. The name of this odoriferous 
flower of early spring is syniijlocari^us foetidus. 
Passing through the ancient oaks I heard birds 
singing in a stubble field beyond. The oaks are 
the finest trees I have ever seen outside of the 
primeval forests of the North. One of them — 
not the largest or oldest — measured twenty feet 
around its trunk at a height of three feet from 
the turf. There are in all nearly thirty of these 
magnificent trees, whose age, if John Evelyn is 
a good authority for the age of oaks, is prob- 
ably to be reckoned by centuries. The glacial 
kame from which these trees spring, old as it is, 
bears on its face the record of change and of 
the woes of nature ; but the oaks, having out- 
lived generations of other trees, seem like moun- 
tain-crests, stable and enduring. The birds in 



WAVERLEY OAKS AND BUSSEY HEMLOCKS. 33 

the stubble field proved to be tree-sparrows. 
They were feeding on the seeds of weeds found 
on patches of moist earth left bare by the wast- 
ing snow. Each bird was saying something in 
a joyous recitative which he maintained continu- 
ously, regardless of the rippling mirth of his 
companions. I crept close to them and watched 
them through the embrasures of an old stone 
wall. Their chestnut caps, white wing-bars and 
long slender tails make them easy birds to re- 
cognize. As I rose they flew, nearly thirty 
strong, and vanished in the mist. 

Recrossing Beaver Brook I kept along the 
Belmont ridge for a mile or more, seeing crows, 
chickadees, a flock of six cedar-birds, a brown 
creejDcr, several kinglets and two grouse, seven 
species all told. 

As sunset drew near the mist became denser. 
The few springtails which I saw along the stone 
walls seemed sluggish. While watching them 
I noticed a tunnel under the snow, made, I sup- 
pose, by a field mouse (arvicol a pennsylv aniens)^ 
and running from the wall to a pile of brush in 
the pasture. It twisted and wound in and out 
in strange figures. Here and there its maker 
seemed to have poked his head through the 
snow to get his bearings. From the length of 
these tunnels I inferred that their little engineer 
works either very fast or very long in making 



34 LAND OF THE LINGERING SNOW. 

them. The snow fell Friday, the tunnels were 
made before Saturday afternoon, yet one of 
them was fully three hundred feet long. 

At the sunset hour a strange glow permeated 
the mist, but it soon vanished. I left the hills 
and crossed the Belmont meadows. The twi- 
lio^ht was weird. The mud of the Concord turn- 
pike seemed unnaturally yellow ; the pollard 
willows assumed horrid shapes ; head-lights on 
distant engines made menacing gleams on the 
wet rails ; the great excavations in clay beds 
near the brickyards were filled with black shad- 
ows from which rose vapors ; brooks once clear, 
now polluted by slaughter-houses, gave out foul 
clouds of mist, and as electric lamps along the 
road suddenly grew into glowing yellow balls in 
the fog, they showed, rising above them, cruci- 
fixes of this nineteenth century on which are 
stretched the electric wires whose messages of 
good or evil keep the nerves of society forever 
uneasy. 

Sunday was a cheerful contrast to Saturday 
night. With a young friend who was heart-full 
of love for birds, flowers, the quiet of the woods 
and the music of the brooks, I tramped from 
Bussey Woods westward through the quiet lanes, 
snow-covered pastures and secluded swamps 
which fill the sparsely settled region in this cor- 
ner of Brookline and West Roxbury. It is a 



WAVFRLEY OAKS AND BUSSEY HEMLOCKS. 35 

charming bit of country crowded with hills, deep 
valleys, groves of many kinds of trees, roaring 
brooks, fern-hung ledges of pudding-stone, and 
sunny orchards. Birds were numerous. We 
began with a golden-winged woodpecker in the 
great trees of the Arboretum ; then a robin ap- 
peared and snapped his tail at us from the top 
of an elm. The voice of a blue jay came from 
the evergreens, and chickadees were everywhere. 
From the first bare hill we gained a broad view 
of Boston, the harbor and the country from Blue 
Hill to Arlington Heights. A fresh west wind 
and a bright blue sky made everything seem 
full of readiness for spring and a new period of 
blossoming growth. Passing Allandale Spring 
and gaining a ridge beyond, we heard the mew- 
ing of a large hawk, and presently saw a pair 
of fine red-shouldered hawks quartering over a 
meadow, probably in search of mice. They rose 
and perched for a moment in the top of a tall 
dead tree. In Walnut Hills Cemetery we found 
quail tracks under barberry bushes, and pres- 
ently flushed a bird. We also saw a kinglet 
in the swamp. Red squirrels, mice, rabbits, and 
another quadruped evidently very abundant in 
the region, had made multitudes of tracks in the 
soft wet snow. Just what this other quadruped 
was I cannot surely say, but if it was what I sus- 
pect it to have been, I should prefer not to travel 



36 LAND OF THE LINGERING SNOW. 

much by night in its company. A chipmunk, 
finding the mouth of his hole free from snow, 
had come out from it into the driveway and 
made a few scampering circles where the snow 
was shallowest. 

As we neared the edge of Newton, we saw a 
downy woodpecker with his red cap on. In the 
swamp beyond were grouse tracks, and foot- 
prints of a man and dog. Both the latter had 
been running, and I fancied the dog had started 
a rabbit which the man had hurried to head off 
at a point where a wood-road rounded the corner 
of the hill. Soon after crossing the Newton line 
we turned toward the southeast and walked 
rapidly back to the top of Bellevue Hill. Wa- 
chusett and Monadnock greeted us from the far 
horizon, and a marvelous blending of bay, city, 
park, suburban settlement, and untouched na- 
ture surrounded us on every side. Fortunate 
Boston, to be girdled by such diversified and 
picturesque country ! The view from this hill is 
readily gained by walking from Highland Sta- 
tion, and it seemed to me more charming than 
that from Blue Hill. 

The last pleasure of the day was in exploring 
the hemlock woods at the Arnold Arboretum. 
Thanks to an arrangement with Harvard Uni- 
versity, the people of Boston have the use of 
this beautiful estate for all time. While its 



WAVEELEY OAKS AND BUSSEY HEMLOCKS. 37 

systematic collections are as yet young and in- 
complete, its natural beauties are many. Just 
north of Bussey Street an abrupt rocky hill, 
crowned with tall and singularly straight hem- 
locks, rises above the surrounding fields and roll- 
ing pastures. From its deeply shaded top look- 
ing down its precipitous ledges upon the roaring 
waters of the Bussey brook, I seemed to feel my- 
self removed from the neighborhood of a great 
city to one of those wild White Mountain ravines 
where trout are hidden in the torrents, where 
the harsh scream of the pileated woodpecker 
breaks the silence of the forest, and where the 
hoof -print of the deer is of tener found than the 
footstep of a man. 



THE FIRST BLUEBIRDS. 

Some of the wildest, roughest, and most heav- 
ily timbered country within sight of Boston lies 
in the western end of Winchester and along the 
northern edge of Arlington. I reached it on 
the afternoon of the last day of winter, by walk- 
ing along the western shore of Mystic Pond until 
near the Winchester line, then bearing to the 
left until I gained the high wooded ledges which 
command Winchester village from the west. It 
was a blustering day : the air was filled alter- 
nately with golden sunlight and flurries of large 
snowflakes. Dry snow covered the ground. 
Along the stone walls it had drifted heavily, 
reaching in many places a depth of two feet. 
Walking in the ploughed fields was uncertain, 
the furrows being filled with snow and the ridges 
blown free from it. The brooks were noisy, but 
their music was muffled by decks of thin ice 
which partially covered them. Great white air- 
bubbles rolled along under these ice decks. 
Here and there watercress, buttercup leaves 
and long blades of grass could be seen pressed 
upward against the transparent ice by the pulsat- 



THE FIRST BLUEBIRDS. 39 

iiig current. In one pool in the pine woods the 
floor of the little basin was studded with scarlet 
partridge berries, surrounded by their rich 
green leaves. 

The view from the crest of the ledges was well 
worth a harder climb. Mystic Pond is beautiful 
in itself, but it is made more so by the Fell coun- 
try, rugged and snow-laden, rising above it. 
Winchester, with its many-colored cottages 
sprinkled over the snow, made a pleasing pic- 
ture. Beyond pond, village, and the Fells, 
loomed the distant heights upon which the Dan- 
vers Asylum showed its gloomy walls. The 
snow flurries which blurred the distance made 
the nest of cities along the Charles softer and 
more picturesque than usual. The ledges are 
well wooded. Pitch-pines, cedars and a sprin- 
kling of hardwood cover them. Among these 
trees were crows, a small hawk, a blue jay, two 
kinglets, two little brown creepers, and nearly a 
dozen chickadees. The creepers and two of the 
chickadees were working together. Both pairs 
of birds signalled each other constantly. If a 
creeper flew it told its mate, who soon followed, 
usually flying to the same tree. The chickadees 
sometimes went to the same tree also, and seemed 
to be always within forty or fifty feet of the 
creepers. 

From this hill, which used to be called Mt. 



40 LAND OF THE LINGERING SNOW. 

Pisgali, I made a bee line for Turkey or One 
Pine Hill, in Arlington. Much of the interme- 
diate region is filled with white pines. In one 
grove of many hundred large pines, the effects of 
the dark green roof, pure white floor and straight 
brown columns forming radiating vistas were 
im23ressive, none the less so from the silence and 
the cold. From a brier thicket on the edge of 
this wood a grouse flew noisily. Near Turkey 
Hill was an odd meeting of paths in the snow. 
A horse and sled, a man, a large dog, two quail, 
a rabbit, and a mouse had all left their prints on 
a square rod of snow. 

It was the last calendar day of winter. The 
sun was going down in wrath. The wind blew 
across the top of One Pine Hill impatiently. 
One Pine, with its sixty stubs of dead and 
broken branches, trembled, and told by its fee- 
bleness of the approaching day when One Pine 
Hill, successor of Three Pine Hill, shall become 
No Pine Hill. 

March came in at midnight smiling. The big 
yellow moon looked down upon the soft snow 
which had fallen since sunset, wrapping the earth 
in ermine. I chose Lincoln for my objective 
point, and reached it by rail early in the fore- 
noon. The air was keen, very keen, the sky 
faintly blue through thin clouds, the sun only a 
yellow spot in the south. Leaving the railway 



THE FIRST BLUEBIRDS. 41 

I wound my way back towards Stony Brook, 
passing through groves of small oaks, meadows 
full of treacherous pools covered with brittle ice, 
belts of whispering white-pines, apple orchards 
and wood-roads leading up hill and down, end- 
ino; nowhere. Four miles of this wanderins: 
brought me to Kendal Green station in Weston, 
with a record of twenty crows, eighteen chicka- 
dees, sixteen tree-sparrows and three blue jays. 
Every farmhouse seemed to have its two or 
three large elms, and its one, two or three noisy 
chickadees. No English sparrows were to be 
seen. The sleighing throughout the region 
appeared to be good and the snow in the fields 
was more than six inches deep on a level. The 
aspect of the country was much more wintry 
than it was nearer the coast, yet Lincoln is only 
thirteen miles northwest of the State House. 
For two weeks past the pussy willows had 
been increasing in size and beauty. Some of 
them had now reached their most attractive 
state, for when they begin to push out their 
yellow stamens they lose much of their peculiar 
charm. Near Kendal Green I found a noble 
family of these little Quakers. They were large, 
and closely set on their stems. Within a foot 
of the tip of one wand were thirty pussies, each 
measuring from a half to three quarters of an 
inch in length. Lincoln, judging by the tracks 



42 LAND OF THE LINGERING SNOW. 

in the snow, is well stocked with rabbits, field 
mice and skunks. It showed me the first fox 
track I have seen in Massachusetts this winter. 
A fox's track resembles closely that of the dog, 
but it has some marked distinctions. The fox 
often clips the snow with his toes, thus prolong- 
ing his footprint slightly ; he also has a longer 
stride than a dog of the same size, and sets his 
feet more nearly in a single line. The footprints 
of the skunk are grouped in fours, and the four 
prints in each group are very nearly in line ; the 
first and third being a little to one side, and the 
second and fourth to the other side, of an imagi- 
nary middle line. 

Just above Kendal Green station the railway 
builders have taken a large bite out of a gravelly 
hillside. The bitten spot faces southeast and is 
as warm a nook on a windy winter day as could 
well be found. It is stocked with dried weed 
stalks, sumacs with their prince's feather-like 
spikes, and red cedars covered with fruit. As I 
rounded the corner of the bitten bank, Sj)ring 
herself stepped out to meet me, for twelve blue- 
birds rose in a flock and flew into the cedars and 
apple-trees which surmounted the cutting. It 
was 1.30 P. M., and as every cloud had vanished 
from the sky the sunlight brought out the color- 
ing of these beautiful birds with marvelous in- 
tensity. It is hard to say which is loveliest, the 



THE FIRST BLUEBIRDS. 43 

cerulean flash from their backs, or the chestnut 
warmth of their round breasts. I watched and 
listened to these birds for more than an hour. 
They were joyously happy. They flew, they 
basked in the sunlight, they went to the orchard 
and peered into a hole in an apple limb in which 
many a bluebird has probably been hatched ; 
they hovered all over the cedars, eating their 
bluish, aromatic fruit ; they perched on the ice 
at the brink of Stony Brook and drank from 
the rushing water ; they pecked at the sumac 
spikes, they sipped melting snow on the slate 
roof of the freight house ; they swung on the tele- 
graph wires, and they filled the air with their 
sweet, simple notes. The station - master said 
some of them had been seen the Wednesday pre- 
vious. At last I left them unwillingly, and 
walked down the track which follows Stony 
Brook towards Waltham. In the swift current 
between the ice which projected far out from 
each shore a muskrat was swimming down 
stream ; twice he dived and twice he surged 
along with the cold flood before I passed him. 



THE MINUTE-MAN IN A SNOWDKTFT. 

It is not often tliat snow-shoes are useful in 
this part of Massachusetts, but as about sixteen 
inches of a recent fall remained on the hills 
when I took my walk on Saturday, March 7, I 
found snow-shoes not only useful but neces- 
sary for cross-country travel. My shoes w^ere 
made by a neat-fingered farmer in the White 
Mountains, and are more durable than many of 
the fancy shoes for sale among athletic goods. 
A fish-shaped frame of ash with two cross 
braces is filled with a coarse mesh of rawhide. 
The foot is secured to this light framework by a 
leather toe-cap from which straps extend across 
the top of the instej) and around the ankle. 
The heel is free to rise and fall in walking, while 
the heel of the snow-shoe is loaded to make it 
trail upon the snow, thus keeping the toe up 
and away from snags. 

I spent most of Saturday afternoon on the 
crest of a high hill not far from the Belmont 
mineral spring. The air was warm and clear, 
the sunlight intensely bright, and the sky won- 
derfully blue. Birds were few and far between, 



THE MINUTE-MAN IN A SNOWDRIFT, 45 

and it is i30ssible that many individuals here in 
the winter have decamped already. Two crows, 
two chickadees, two brown creepers, six rob- 
ins, four quail, constituted my list for the day. 
The robins passed overhead about three o'clock, 
flying high, fast, and due north. They may not 
have stopped short of the New Hampshire hills, 
for which they seemed to be aiming. The quail 
were feeding on barberries, and judging by their 
tracks there seemed to have been eight or ten of 
them at work. A quail's footprint looks like 
the barb and part of the shaft of an arrow 
pointing in the direction from which the bird 
has come. When they hurry, their tracks are 
run together, forming a continuous line of per- 
petuated panic. The quail were quite noisy on 
Saturday, making a harsh call unlike their " bob, 
bob-white." During the coming week or fort- 
night the number of kinds of birds near Boston 
is likely to increase. I have long been hoping 
to see crossbills, redpoll linnets, siskins, red 
bellied nuthatches and others of tlie winter 
birds, but this is an off year for them. Now 
I am looking for redwing blackbirds, purj^le 
grackles and rusty grackles, song sparrows, 
swamp sparrows, fox sparrows, purple finches, 
pewees and other early migrants. 

About sunset on Saturday I was in a grove of 
venerable red cedars. The lower half of the 



46 LAND OF THE LINGERING SNOW. 

trees was in shadow, the upper half in sun- 
light. Below, all seemed cold and dreary : the 
unbroken snow, the rough trunks of the trees, 
their sombre foliage. Above, all seemed warm 
and cheerful : the bright blue sky, the passing 
bits of white cloud, the upper branches of the 
cedars glowing with golden olive-green. I 
sought an open ledge where I could see from 
Blue Hill to Monadnock, and watched the sun 
sink into a bed of clouds. The after effects of 
color were pronounced. Overhead the sky was 
cobalt ; low in the east it was pale Prussian 
blue ; in the north it was deep orange, and in the 
west silvery, with a few dark ragged clouds 
shredded over it. After sunset and just before 
darkness comes, colors, irrespective of the out- 
lines of the objects to which they belong, stand 
out more forcibly than at any other time. This 
was noticeable Saturday evening. The red of a 
distant steeple was aggressive ; so was the yellow 
of some tufts of dead grass waving in the wind, 
and so was the russet of the dried leaves on a 
grove of oaks or beeches two miles distant. 
The sky at that hour was a matchless back- 
ground for the copper-colored stems of the 
willow trees, the bewildering network of descend- 
ing lines in an elm's branches and twigs ; and 
the distant rows of maples marching along an 
opposing hilltop with the orange liglit of the 



THE MINUTE-MAN IN A SNOWDRIFT. 47 

nortliern sky burning througli them. Mist 
effects, and glimpses of distances through driv- 
ing snowflakes are fascinating, because they 
leave much to the imagination. Views of clear 
sunset skies, radiant with color, ranks of leafless 
trees showing black against the snow, peaks 
of snow growing bluer as night draws on — 
these also are fascinating, because the eye 
seems to gain the truth about wdiatever it rests 
upon. Everything is clean-cut, sharply out- 
lined against sky or snow, sincere, real, satis- 
fying. 

Sunday, the 8th, was as warm and still a 
day as the month of March is capable of pro- 
ducing. From early morning until late in the 
afternoon there was not breeze enouo;"h to rustle 
a leaf, much less to cool cheek and eye smarting 
under the direct and reflected rays of the sun. 
I took an early train to Bedford and began my 
walk there, not because of the charms of Bed- 
ford, but because the train went no further. 
Bedford is a pleasant, old-fashioned village, in 
the midst of a comparatively flat country. 
Walkinsr throuo-h the villas:© I noticed its hi<rh- 
shouldered and many windowed meeting-house, 
its haughty elms, and its air of ancient respecta- 
bility. Five miles away, said a weather-worn 
guide board, is Concord town ; so I turned west- 
ward, feeling sure that early spring birds must 



48 LAND OF THE LINGERING SNOW. 

haunt the home of Thoreau. Just outside of 
Bedford streets I sat down on a stone wall to 
bask in the warm sunshine. The mercury stood 
at 68° in the shade, yet a snow-drift close by was 
four and a half feet in depth. The bell of the 
old meeting-house was tolling, and distance 
made its voice sweet. It sometimes seems as 
though church bells attract the birds. In the 
perfect stillness of the air I could hear many 
bird notes. A yellowhammer was calling per- 
sistently from a distant maple ; a bluebird sang 
in the nearest orchard, and six noisy crows were 
flying to and fro in a ploughed field examining 
spots of earth left bare by the receding snow. 
Presently a flock of three blue jays entered the 
orchard and seemed to find satisfactory food in 
the apples left on the ground last autumn. 

Between Bedford and Concord I saw eleven 
more blue jays, a dozen more crows, thirteen 
chickadees, five tree-sparrows and the tracks 
of a flock of ten quail. There were also many 
crow tracks in the snow. They are larger 
than those of quail and the print of the long 
hind toe is very marked. The feature of the 
day was the repeated occurrence of blue ja3'S. 
The birds were noisy and restless, and most of 
them were moving northward. The country 
through which I passed was level and uninter- 
esting. Little timber was in sight, and most of 



THE MINUTE-MAN IN A SNOWDRIFT. 49 

the farms had an air of being mortgaged. Dirty 
cows and heifers sunned themselves in the barn- 
yards, multitudes of hens roamed over bare 
spots around the buildings, and mongrel curs 
barked from back door-steps. 

Before taking an afternoon train back from 
Concord, I wandered about the town for an 
hour, admiring its aged shade trees and com- 
fortable homesteads. In front of one of these 
homesteads a red squirrel was eating buds from 
the upper branches of the elm. If the British 
soldier had tried to reach the bridge over Con- 
cord River he would have had hard work to 
get at the "embattled farmer," for snow vary- 
ing from ten inches to more than two feet 
in depth blocked the lane leading to the Minute- 
Man. Only the foot of a crow had trodden 
the white covering of historic ground, and the 
silence and loneliness but added to the charm 
and suggestiveness of the scene. The Old 
Manse could be seen through the leafless elms, 
the suow drifted high against its walls. The 
eager river hurried along under the bridge, 
bearing away many a raft of ice. The alert 
figure in bronze stood above the stream gazing 
through the elm vista at the snow-covered dis- 
tance. He is emblematic of something more 
than our national vigilance against political 



60 LAND OF THE LINGERING SNOW. 

injustice. Our nation was not formed when his 
musket was loaded. He was simply an Anglo- 
Saxon standing for his rights. That is what he 
is to-day, — the spirit of the race. 



THE COMING OF THE BIRDS. 

The week between March 8th and 14th was 
one filled with early spring messages. The air 
whispered them, and the stems of the willows 
blushed with joy at what it said. The sun 
stripped the snow from the earth and found 
beneath it green grass, buttercup and five- 
finger leaves and the sage-green velvet of the 
mullein. Ice moved in the streams and partially 
melted on the marshes, and its going was hailed 
with merry music by song-sparrows, bluebirds, 
and redwing blackbirds. 

Not long after sunrise on Thursday, the 12th, 
I was in the tangle of rose bushes, willows and 
rushes, which surrounds the West Cambridge 
brickyards and clay pits. It was a still, warm 
morning. Birds were singing on every side. 
They were not chirping pretty fragments of 
song, but pouring out in all the plenitude of 
fearless happiness their greeting to home and a 
new day. Before 8.30 I saw nearly a dozen 
song sparrows, a bluebird, a tree sparrow, a 
flock of twenty-six cedar birds, large numbers 
of crows, and an Acadian owl. My meeting 



52 LAND OF THE LINGERING SNOW. 

with the little "saw-whet" within the limits 
of Cambridge, and in sight of dozens of passers 
on Concord turnpike, was a piece of unusual 
luck. He was perched in a large willow about 
thirty feet distant from the sidewalk, and ten 
feet from the ground. As I jumped the fence 
and approached him he stiffened himself, drew 
his feathers close to his body, more than half 
closed his ej^es and pretended to be a speckled 
brown and white stump of a limb. As I raised 
a broken branch before his face, his big yellow 
eyes opened wide, his wings quickly spread and 
he fell forward upon them and flapped noiselessly 
to a distant tree. 

Late on Friday afternoon, while traversing 
the marshes between Spy Pond in Arlington 
and Fresh Pond in Cambridge, I saw a flock 
of seven blackbirds. They seemed to be follow- 
ing up Alewife Brook towards the marshes 
between Cambridge and Belmont. They were 
beating against a high wind and flying too 
high for me to be sure whether they were red- 
winged blackbirds or rusty grackles. Early 
Saturday morning I set out to find them, and 
not long after sunrise I heard the familiar 
" cong-ka-ree " of the redwings coming from 
a swamp north of Fresh Pond. I saw three, 
the one nearest me being a male, whose scarlet 
and buff epaulets fairly blazed in the sunlight. 



THE COMING OF THE BIRDS. 53 

Prolonging my morning walk for some distance 
I saw five song sparrows, three bluebirds, two 
herring gulls, four robins, a meadow lark, a 
pigeon woodpecker, and a pair of sparrow 
hawks. The latter showed unmistakably by 
their love-making that they were paired for the 
season. They were in a grove of lofty hard- 
wood trees, in the hollow of one of which they 
have nested for several years. 

For my Saturday afternoon walk I chose the 
belt of rough country north of the Lexington 
Branch Railway, between Arlington village and 
Great Meadow in Lexing-ton. Leavino- the 
train at East Lexington, I crossed the lower end 
of Great Meadow and aimed for the pine-crested 
ledges to the north and east. On these low- 
lands I saw two song sparrows and six tree 
sparrows in company. A blustering and cold 
wind was blowing, and the birds kept close to 
cover. The tree sparrows allowed me to come 
within six or eight feet of them, in preference 
to flying. In the midst of jDloughed and ditched 
meadow land was a cup-shaped hollow filled 
with a frozen bog. Red maples grew in it 
thickly, and under them a group of alders. As 
I passed this spot, the roaring wind almost led 
me to ignore a sharp squeak of alarm from a bird 
which was scratching in the leaves on the edge 
of the hollow. Fortunately I heard it, and fol- 



64 LAND OF THE LINGERING SNOW. 

lowed the bird and its companion until they flew 
from bush to bush into a maple. They were 
bright iron-rust color on their tails, rumps, and 
wings, and their white breasts were thickly 
marked with arrowheads of the same pronounced 
shade. In size, they outranked an English 
sparrow by about one fifth. They were fox 
sparrows. In plumage, song, and character, 
these sparrows are among the most favored of 
American birds. 

Leaving the lowlands, I ascended the heavily 
wooded ledges, of which Turkey or One Pine 
Hill is the best known. Concealed within 
them is a deep yet sunny ravine where hepatica 
grows, and over which in the tops of lofty pines 
crows, hawks, and gray squirrels make their 
nests. I was welcomed to this sylvan glen by 
a brown rabbit, who permitted me to come 
within a yard of him before displaying his cotton 
tail in flight. Hepatica was not in bloom, but, 
rising between its trilobate leaves of last year's 
growth, nearly an inch of new sprout promised 
early flowers. From the middle of the dancing 
brook at the bottom of the ravine to the stems 
of the great pines at its summit, the melting 
snow had exposed to view old vegetation, hold- 
ing new-born life in its protecting arms. In the 
brook, hundreds of heads of skunk-cabbage 
could be counted. From the overhanging rocks, 



THE COMING OF THE BIRDS. 55 

the evergreen fronds of four species of ferns 
(including asjjlenium, ehhieurn) nodded in the 
breeze. Upon the sunny banks partridge ber- 
ries and the clustered jewels of the false 
solomon's-seal gleamed among green leaves and 
brown pine needles. Three kinds of pyrola, 
rattlesnake-plantain, pipsissewa, buttercup, and 
three club mosses decorated the steep slopes. 
On a warm gray face of ledge above, a generous 
growth of bearberry spread its lustrous green 
and russet leaves to the sky, and close by the 
pale corydalis grew in abundance. The recent 
growth in some of these plants was marked, par- 
ticularly in the buttercup QR. hidhosus) and 
bearberry. Walking back to Arlington, I saw 
a downy woodpecker, a grouse, two golden- 
crested kinglets, four chickadees, a dozen 
crows, two flocks of blackbirds, including 
fully forty birds, three more tree sparrows, a 
fat spider, two black and orange caterpillars, 
two snow-squalls, and a beautiful golden sunset. 
Saturday night was clear and cold, more like a 
winter night than one with some claims to the 
name of spring. 

Sunday, the middle day of March, was bright 
and blustering, a sharp contrast to the Sunday 
previous, with its heat and strange stillness. I 
began my walk at Waverley, and went by way of 
Quince Street and Beaver Street to the easterly 



66 LAND OF THE LINGERING SNOW. 

slope of Prospect Hill, in Walthara. The roads 
were frozen, and the meadows stiff with ice. 
Here and there roaring brooks passed under the 
road and danced away towards the Charles. 
The spaces between them were in some instances 
filled by ledgy hills capped and sprinkled with 
red cedars, some of which were sturdy old 
trees with foliage full of golden-olive light. 
From one of the hills came a ga}^ troop of 
robins flying in wide circles over the fields. 
One of them sang in a timid way the song of 
robin's love. It was the first attempt at the 
complete song that I had heard this season. 
From another ledge, covered with hardwood 
trees, eight chickadees deployed across an or- 
chard. Every one of them was saying some- 
thing merry. On the edge of a meadow seven 
bluebirds sat in the low branches of maple- 
trees, and dropped one by one to the ground 
to pick up food seen by their quick eyes in 
the grass. I saw three more bluebirds later 
in the day. Near the foot of Prospect Hill, a 
flock of nearly a dozen birds, feeding in a yard 
among spruces and maples, was found to include 
chickadees, brown creepers, and a kinglet. I 
saw four brown creepers during tiie day, one 
of which in flying described curves and spirals 
in the air which would have made a tumbler 
pigeon green with envy. In a sheltered nook 



THE COMING OF THE BIRDS. 57 

by a spring, a thicket of evergreens, and a brush 
fence, two fox sparrows popped into view for 
a moment. Near them a grouse was found in 
a pine grove. 

The eastern side of Prospect Hill holds in its 
curve a spot of singular beauty. Behind a 
veil of pine woods lies hidden a rocky amphi- 
theatre, through which flows a sparkling stream 
of spring water. Dozens of its tiny cascades 
were framed in moss and ferns. Its worn 
boulders were partially sheathed in ice, and in 
many places beds of snow still rested upon its 
banks and overhung the water. The background 
of this picture was a steep wall of rock and earth 
nearly fifty feet in height, overhung by tall 
oaks, walnut and ash trees, and covered with 
remnants of snow drifts, mossy boulders and 
patches of last year's ferns nodding in the wind. 

Scrambling up this cliff, I found myself at 
the summit of a hill justly noted for its wide 
and varied view. A vast and irregular city 
seemed to reach from its southeastern foot to 
the waters of Massachusetts Bay. Far away 
to the southwest, two large towns could be seen 
rearing their spires against the sky. They were 
about in the direction of Westboro' and Milford. 
The New Hampshire mountains showed to much 
better advantage than from Arlington Heights, 
and I could clearly identify the different sum- 



58 LAND OF THE LINGERING SNOW. 

niits of the Monadnock range. But this was not 
all. Just to the left of the twin Uncanoonucs 
was what appeared to be the southern Kearsarge, 
in Andover, New Hampshire. This peak is 
seventy-five miles distant, and has an elevation 
of 2,943 feet. I am less confident that I could 
distinguish Agamenticus in York, Maine, but a 
faint blue summit broke the monotonous sky 
line near the point at which this hill might be 
seen were it high enough. 



THE EQUINOCTIAL ON THE DUNES. 

The dunes of Ipswich in Massachusetts lie in 
a somewhat sechided and peculiar spot. Facing 
the open ocean between Plum Island and Coffin's 
Beach, the Ipswich shore presents a strange 
aspect to the passing world, seaward, skyward, 
or landward. It is a rough bit of desert, made 
into odd shapes by wind, tide, and river. From 
no point of view is it commonplace. 

An early morning train from Boston landed 
me on March 21 at Ipswich station. Rain 
fell in a determined way upon the earth, 
the snowdrifts, and the rushing Ipswich River. 
In a rickety buggy drawn by a lean horse I 
started for the dunes. It was a five-mile drive 
over a rolling glacial plain and wind-swept 
marsh land. As the sea was neared, the wind 
became stronger and stronger. The buggy 
swayed from side to side ; the lean horse, stung 
by rain in front and whip behind, staggered 
feebly on against the storm ; and birds, waves, 
sand, trees, marsh grass, the face of the water, 
— everything, in fact, which could move, — 



60 LAND OF THE LINGERING SNOW. 

either fled before the gale or writhed under its 
blows. At nine o'clock I reached a lonely, storm- 
battered house, half concealed among the sand- 
hills. The Equinoctial was at its height. It 
was an hour when prudence bade one stay in the 
house, but when that which makes a man happy 
among the rough revelry of Nature said, Go, 
give yourself to the storm. The sea could not 
be seen from the house, for the dunes stood in 
the way, but the wind, the breath of the sea, 
told where it lay. The wind was charged with 
rain, hail, cutting bits of sand, the odor of brine, 
and the roar of the billowy battle beyond the 
dunes. 

What are the dunes ? They are the waves of 
the sea perpetuated in sand. They were changing 
and growing at that moment, as they are at every 
moment when the winds blow. A ridge forty feet 
high, eastward of the house, was hurling yellow- 
ish sand into the dooryard and against the bnild- 
ings. From its top could be seen a hollow be- 
yond and then another ridge, from the crest 
of which a sand banner waved in the wind. 
That ridge surmounted, a broader hollow was 
seen beyond, containing lagoons of gleaming 
water and thickets of richly colored shrubs and 
a few stunted pines. To right, left, and ahead, 
other ridges rose like mimic mountains. Some 
of them had been cut straight through by 



THE EQUINOCTIAL ON THE DUNES. Gl 

storms, and showed plainly wind stratification 
on their cut surfaces. Wading through the 
pools, from which a few black ducks rose and 
flew swiftly out to sea, I gained the third ridge, 
which was the highest of the dunes. Beyond 
was another hollow, then a fourth dune, then a 
beach strewn with seaweed, shells, and wreck- 
age, and finally half a mile of snowy breakers, 
boiling and hissing on their rhythmic journey 
shoreward. At times the eye seemed to reach 
further out to sea, but at once the rain, foam, 
and driving cloud-masses closed in on the waves, 
and sky and ocean were combined in an attempt 
to overwhelm the dunes. Walking upon the 
beach was like wrestling with a strong man. 
Looking through the stinging rain was almost 
impossible. Not far up the beach was the wreck 
of a small schooner. It was half buried in the 
sand and just within reach of the waves. Stream- 
ing with rain, my face smarting from the flying 
sand, and my breath exhausted, I gained the 
wreck and sought a refuge in its interior. 

The wreck's ribs rose high into the air, and a 
part of her sheathing had not yet been beaten off 
by gales. The waves struck this wall of plank and 
sent shiver after shiver through the broken hulk. 
Inside, the wind had little effect, and the water 
that came in was that flowing downward from 
the beach, as great waves broke upon the sand 



62 LAND OF THE LINGERING SNOW. 

and then swept round over tlie wreck's buried 
side. Peering through the gaps between the tim- 
bers, I looked down into and across a raging 
mass of water. It was equal to a shipwreck 
without the fear of death. Dozens of herring 
gulls, now and then a black-backed gull, and 
every few minutes small flocks of black ducks, 
flew past athwart the gale. Sometimes a gull 
would face the wind and fly against it steadily, 
vigorously, yet never advance an inch. The 
ducks looked as though they were flying back- 
ward, so oddly balanced were they. After 
nearly an hour of watching I waded ashore, fol- 
lowed my tracks back across the sand-hills, and 
gained a comfortable " stove-side " in the weather- 
beaten house. The noonday meal of fat pork, 
boiled corned beef, cabbage, clams, soda bis- 
cuit, doughnuts, mince pie, and coffee seemed 
in some degree a reasonable complement to the 
gale. 

Early in the afternoon, in company with two 
friends, — a bird-watcher and a mouse-hunter, — 
I faced the storm again. We walked north- 
ward rather than eastward, keeping within the 
hollows of the dunes and not climbing to their 
windy crests. Rain fell in torrents and in larger 
drops than in the morning. It whipped into 
foam the pale blue and green pools between the 
sand-hills. Gusts of air struck these pools from 



THE EQUINOCTIAL ON THE DUNES. 63 

ever-varying angles, the cliffs and passes of the 
mimic mountains making all manner of currents 
and eddies in the wind. Ruffled by these gusts 
the pools changed color from moment to mo- 
ment, sometimes being white with foam and 
reflected light from the sky, then varying 
through every shade of blue and sea-green to 
ultramarine. The coloring in these miniature 
valleys was exquisitely beautiful. In some, the 
yellow sand, over which lines and ripples of pur- 
ple sand were laid, curved from every side with 
the most graceful lines downward from the 
ridges to a single tinted mirror at the centre. 
In others, where the valley was broader, lagoons 
filled with tiny islands were fringed with vegeta- 
tion of striking shades. The clumps of sturdy 
" poverty grass " (Jmdsonia tomentosa) cov- 
ered much of the ground, its coloring, while it 
was wet by the rain, varying from burnt umber 
to madder brown. Over it strayed scalp locks 
of pale yellow grasses, restless in the wind. 
Next to the pools and under them grew a dense 
carpet of cranberry vines, yielding shades of 
dark crimson, maroon, .and wine color. Lines 
of floating cranberries edged these tiny lakes, 
or shone like precious stones at their bottom. 
Between the lagoons and on their islands dense 
thickets of meadow-sweet and leafless wild-rose 
bushes formed masses of intense color, the 



64 LAND OF THE LINGERING SNOW. 

shades running from rich reds through orange 
to gleaming yellow. The rain glistening on 
these warmly tinted stems made them unnatu- 
rally brilliant. 

On the shores of some of the lagoons, or form- 
ing small conical islands in their midst, w^ere 
white heai)s of broken clam-shells. The shells 
when disturbed seemed to be embedded in fine 
black soil, like that left by long-extinguished 
fires. When these shell-heaps were first ex- 
plored they contained bones of many kinds of fish 
and birds, including fragments of that extinct 
bird, the great auk. They also yielded broken 
pieces of roughly ornamented pottery, bits of 
copper, and stone implements of the Indians 
who had made the Ipswich Kiver and its sand- 
hills one of their principal camping-grounds. 
This region has given to relic-hunters bushels 
of arrow-heads, stone knives, and hatchets. 

As we approached the largest of the lagoons, 
which covered several acres, black ducks began 
to appear, flying in all directions. They rose 
not only from the large lagoon, but from many 
smaller pools hidden among the network of 
dunes. Over a hundred were in the air at 
once. Crows, too, and gulls joined in the 
winged stampede caused by our coming. One 
flock of crows flying towards Cape Ann later in 
the afternoon numbered eighty-three birds. Our 



THE EQUINOCTIAL ON THE DUNES. 65 

walk ended at Ipswich Light, a small beacon 
placed on the edge of the dunes as a warning 
asfainst their treacherous sands. A bit of land 
near it had been reclaimed from the desert 
and gave promise of being a garden in a few 
weeks. The rain was at its fiercest here, and beat 
upon the lighthouse as though it would wash it 
from the face of the earth. As the wind blew 
the sand grass, its long blades whirled around, 
cutting circles in the sand with their tough tips 
and edges. These circles could be seen from a 
long distance, so deeply and clearly were they 
cut. Sometimes a long blade and a short one 
whirled on the same root and made concentric 
circles. The geometrical correctness of these 
figures made them striking elements in a land- 
scape so chaotic as the dunes in the Equinoctial. 

Scattered about over the sand were small 
star-shaped objects about the size of a silver 
dollar, and brown in color. They looked at 
first glance as though they might have been 
stamped out of thick leather. Whether they 
were fish, flesh, or plant, was a question not 
readily answered by a novice. They proved to 
be a kind of puff-ball, common in such regions as 
the dunes, and singularly well adapted to life on 
shifting sands. 

Through the long night of the 21st the wind 
wailed around the house, and the sound of the 



66 LAND OF THE LINGERING SNOW. 

waves came up from the sea. Long before sun- 
rise I was awakened by the quacking of domes- 
tic ducks in the inlet just in front of my 
windows. Fog and a gentle east wind ruled the 
morning, and the fog made queer work with 
outlines and perspective among the sand-hills. 
Not far from the house there once stood a fine 
orchard, many of the trees in which had attained 
a generous size considering their exposed situa- 
tion. But the dunes marked them for destruc- 
tion. The greedy sand piled itself around 
their roots, rose higher and higher on their 
trunks, caught the tips of their lower branches, 
dragged theiTi under its cold and deadly 
weight, reached up to those higher, and, as the 
trees began to pine, hurled itself against their 
dry leaves, twigs, and branches, then set to work 
to wear away the trunks themselves. Rising 
through the fog, these remains seemed like tor- 
tured victims reaching out distorted arms for 
pity. Only a few of the trees retained branches 
having green wood and pliable twigs, and these 
were half buried by recent inroads of sand. 
They reminded me of the fate of men caught in 
quicksands, and drawn down inch by inch to 
their death. 

Tracks in sand are almost as telling records 
as tracks in snow. Skunks had wandered about 
over these ridges in force. They do not find 



THE EQUINOCTIAL ON THE DUNES. G7 

their food among the hills, but on the shore 
where the carrion of the sea is left by the tide. 
The ocean edge is usually strewn with dead fish, 
sea birds, and shell-fish. Around these rem- 
nants are to be seen the tracks of gulls and 
crows, or the birds themselves. That morning 
the upper air was noisy with crows coming back 
from their night roost. They soon scattered 
along the beach, feeding. For some reason the 
ducks had disappeared from the lagoons. A 
few flew past up the coast, but the greater part 
seemed to have already moved northward. It 
was upon these sand-hills that the Ipswich spar- 
row was first shot in December, 1868. The bird 
is much like the grass finch in contour, and in 
behavior when approached by man. Its coloring 
is that of the Savannah sparrow, only several 
shades lighter. During the March migration 
the Ipswich sparrow is readily to be found 
among the dunes. Startled by my coming, three 
of them stopped feeding on the edge of a small, 
clear lagoon and flew up the steep side of the 
sand-hill above it. This sand-hill was dotted 
with clumps of coarse, yellowish grass, the sand 
itself was a shade paler than the grass, and the 
sparrows' plumage toned in with both so per- 
fectly that when the birds alighted it was almost 
impossible to see them. One dropped down 
behind a bunch of grass, and ran along swiftly 



68 LAND OF THE LINGERING SNOW. 

with his head pointing forward until he gained 
the cover of a larger growth of grass, then 
stojoped and raised his head slowly above it, and 
remained motionless, vigilant. 

Crouched among the grass in a hollow I 
watched him, my glass levelled at his head. 
Five minutes may have passed before he gave a 
sharp " chip," ran at full speed down the bank, 
and flew back to his feeding-ground. Near an- 
other pool a dozen or more horned larks were 
feeding on the wet ground. This bird is one 
of the most beautiful I know. In the pool, cad- 
dis-worms were crawling about in cases made, 
not of grains of gravel, but of sections of scour- 
ing-rush, which they had found to answer all 
practical purposes. This is an instance of the 
use of ready-made clothing to ojDpose to Nature's 
usual demand for custom-made garments. These 
caddis-worms were the first water-life which I 
had seen stirring this spring. Later in the day 
I saw " Tom Coddies " or " mummichogs " 
swimming in a ditch, but they are active all 
winter. Another sign of sj^ring was the track 
of a white-footed mouse (hesperomys leuco- 
pus) found by the mouse-hunter on his morn- 
ing round. 

Standing on the crest of one of the dunes 
next the sea, and looking through the fog across 
lagoons filled with islands to other dunes of 



THE EQUINOCTIAL ON THE DUNES. 69 

many outlines, varying from pointed peak or 
bold bluff to long graceful ridge, it was impos- 
sible to retain true ideas of size and distance. 
The proportions of pools, islets, bushes, and 
cliffs corresponded so closely to those which 
would have marked lakes, islands, groves, and 
mountain peaks that, for all the eye could tell, 
Winnepesaukee and the Franconia Mountains 
were there in all their beauty. During the 
forenoon the fog crept back to the sea, the sun 
came out, and the landscape appeared in new 
colors and proportions. Lakes shrank to pools, 
mountains dwindled to sand ridges. The sand 
itself grew pale, and many of its most brightly 
colored plants lost their brilliancy as they dried. 
This was strikingly noticeable in the hudsonia 
tomentosa, which changed from rich brown 
tones to sage green and gray. Ducks were re- 
placed by numbers of redwing blackbirds, and 
all day long the " flick, flick, flick, flick, flick " 
of a pigeon woodpecker rang from a tree on Hog 
Island. 

In the afternoon we rowed across the shallow 
inlet to the island, which is what geologists call a 
drumlin, and sailors or farmers a " hog back." 
It is a gently sloping hill of gravel, whose longer 
axis is supposed to indicate the direction of the 
glacier's advance at that point. The length of 
the island from northwest to southeast is a little 



70 LAND OF THE LINGERING SNOW. 

over half a mile, and its height along its backbone 
is one hundred and forty feet. A sunny old 
farm-house on the low land at the end of the 
island nearest Coffin's Beach was pointed out 
as the birthplace of Rufus Choate. Beyond it 
was a fair view of Essex River, with its gleaming 
flats dotted with clam-diggers. Coffin's Beach, 
Annisquam Harbor, and the shores of Cape 
Ann, made dim and mysterious by the east wind's 
veil of haze, a pledge of returning storm. The 
view northward across Castle Neck and the 
mouths of Ipswich and Rowley rivers to Plum 
Island was not only beautiful, but interesting by 
reason of the distinctness with which it mapped 
the dunes. As line upon line of white-edged 
breakers rolled, in upon the shore, they seemed to 
turn to sand and continue their undulations 
across Castle Neck to our inlet. Bits of blue 
shone between these sand waves. They were 
the mimic lakes of the caddis- worms and the 
Ipswich sparrows. Bits of white were on the 
sands of the beach and the flats along the 
inlet. They were flocks of gulls feeding. So 
still was the air that now and then the uncanny 
whining of one of these birds came up to us. 
Inland the sun made the haze golden instead 
of gray, and we could not see many miles. 
In Ipswich, Hamilton, and Essex many drum- 
lins could be seen, one of which. Heartbreak 



THE EQUINOCTIAL ON THE DUNES. 71 

Hill, was especially conspicuous. The outlines 
of these hills seemed restful and placid. The 
marshes between them were straw-colored, and 
cut into arabesques by meandering tide rivers 
of blue. 

The stone walls on Hog Island were apparently 
being swallowed up by the earth. The boul- 
ders also seemed to be sinking below the surface. 
One stone wall had sunk so that its top was 
almost level with the ground. In the fields at 
the base of the hill, tunnels of the common field- 
mice (armcola pennsylvanicus) ran in every 
direction. The mouse-hunter, in order to prove 
beyond a doubt that these sturdy mice, and 
not moles, were responsible for the tunnels, dug 
one of them out of his cave and produced him, 
struggling. 

At sunset, after our row back to the sand- 
hills, I climbed the highest dune and took a 
last look at the singidar panorama of blue 
lagoons, pale yellow ridges, wind-cut bluffs, bur- 
ied trees, and foaming breakers. It certainly 
was a unique landscape, and one fascinating for 
many reasons, but it had something sinister in 
it. The ocean was covered by a thin fog, the 
east wind coming from the waves was chilling, 
and it brought confused sounds of roaring water 
and shrill-voiced gulls. The sands, forever shift- 
ing, seemed treacherous, the sea restless, and the 



72 LAND OF THE LINGERING SNOW. 

• 

wind which stirred them full of discontent. 
There are many who might find rest in the rest- 
lessness of the sea, the dunes, and the winds. 
Perhaps my lack of sympathy is hereditary. 
Rather more than two hundred and fifty years 
ago a father and son were fishermen upon these 
treacherous coasts. In the great storm of De- 
cember 15, 1636, the father was claimed by the 
ocean as its own. The son gave up the sea and 
grew corn by the ponds of Chebacco. Before 
he died he moved out of sight and hearing of 
the ocean, and for many generations none of 
his descendants lived within tide-water limits. 



THE RENAISSANCE. 

The twenty-fifth of March was the first 
day of the year which could, without any 
mental reservation, he called a spring day. 
I was awakened early by the clamor of 
English sparrows, the shrill calling of robins, 
the " creaking " of purple grackles, and the 
cawing of crows. By eight o'clock, with one 
who, like myself, had arranged to gauge the 
season on this bright and beautiful morning, I 
was on my way behind a willing horse, speeding 
by Mount Auburn, through the walled fields of 
Belmont, past Waverley Oaks, and on towards 
Concord, with Rock Meadow and Beaver Brook 
on the left, and Arlington Heights and their 
cedar-crowned ridges on the right. Every 
breath of fresh, sweet, sparkling air seemed full 
of new, tingling life. Near Payson Park Lodge 
a song sparrow was singing. We stopped and 
listened to it. Every note was well and fully 
rendered. The bird was, like the day, one of 
Nature's successes. Just beyond the Oaks, near 
Beaver Brook Cascade, a flock of a dozen quail 
flew over us, and on, northward, at a rate of 



74 LAND OF THE LINGERING SNOW. 

speed which was marvellous. They were flying 
high enough to clear the tops of the trees. The 
rush of their wings was like a squall passing 
through a pine grove. 

As we drove slowly between the even rows of 
willows which make Kock Meadow on the Con- 
cord turnpike one of the most charming spots 
near Cambridge, song sparrows by threes and 
fours were seen and heard at every lull in the 
west wind's blowing. Two rusty grackles flew 
over, alighted in an elm, sounded their quaint 
notes, and then dropped down into the meadow. 
A redwing blackbird '' ka-reed " from a treetop, 
and more than a dozen crows revelled in loud 
cawing, sturdy flying, or rapid walking over the 
lowlands. Over the hills and far away we drove 
in the bright sunshine, until, reaching at last the 
secluded spot we had chosen for our goal, we 
set out through a narrow, walled lane for the 
woods. 

A muskrat, sunning himself on a stone, see- 
ing us, hurled himself across the lane into and 
through a puddle, showering spray in every 
direction, and out of sight under a stone wall 
beyond. A single junco, the first I had seen 
this year, rose from a ploughed field, flashed his 
white tail feathers, and turned his cowled head 
to watch us. High over a pine-crowned hill a 
red-shouldered hawk was sailing in small circles, 



THE RENAISSANCE. 75 

and with rather nervous flight. Now and then 
its discordant mewing came to our ears on the 
wings of the wind. 

In the orchards bluebirds were singing. We 
heard at least ten. They seemed to say, '"''Cher- 
u-it^ cher-u-it^'' and to mean by It something 
very pure and endearing. The lane led Into 
a wooded meadow, crossed by several brooks, 
which we examined with Interest for signs of 
water life. Within half a mile we found one 
painted turtle (chrysemys picta} and eighteen 
speckled tortoises (jianemys guttatus). Some 
seemed rather feeble, though full of enjoyment 
of the warm sunshine. One of the number 
had come to an early, sad, and to us mysterious 
end. We found his empty shell picked clean 
of all soft portions except the tail and a bit of 
skin which adhered to It. The shell was un- 
scarred. Neither of us could imagine what 
beast or bird could have slain him. The 
crime had been committed only a few hours 
before, for the shell was still moist. In the 
mud on the side of the brook we found an 
unfamiliar track. Two five-clawed feet, making 
a track as broad as the length of the first joint 
of a man's thumb, had been planted side by 
side, while several Inches in front of them two 
smaller feet had made two prints, one of which 
was exactly in front of the other. My friend 



76 LAND OF THE LINGERING SNOW. 

thought the prmts might be those of a young 
otter. We also found where a muskrat had 
stepped upon the mud, placing his hind feet 
so closely together as to make one broad print, 
dragging meanwhile his tail in such a way as 
to leave an odd groove in the mud. Flying 
about in this meadow and the higher woods 
adjoining it were two kinds of butterflies and 
a beautiful moth. I also found a partially de- 
veloped locust. 

While watching and admiring these gay sur- 
vivors of the winter, we heard a brown creeper 
sing. It was a rare treat. The song is singu- 
larly strong, full of meaning and charm, espe- 
cially when the size of its tiny performer is 
remembered. A grouse, two tree sparrows, and a 
downy woodpecker were added to our list towards 
the middle of the day, and early in the after- 
noon two chickadees, seemingly mated, were 
greatly exercised over my friend's excellent 
mimicry of the " phoebe note " of the male chick- 
adee. The male answered with much vigor, and 
within less than three feet of the mimic's face. 
In making this sweet ventriloqual note, the bird 
throws its head back and opens its beak, quite in 
the manner of a Christmas-card bird. The only 
other bird song which we heard was that of the 
flicker calling energetically to his mate. 

The event of the day was the sight of a barred 



THE RENAISSANCE. 77 

owl, which we startled into flight in the depths 
of a pine grove where snowdrifts still lingered. 
Although close watch was kept for frogs or pip- 
ing hylas, none were seen or heard. Our sur- 
prise was great, however, to see a large wood- 
chuck run clumsily through an oak grove, and 
turn to v/atch us from the mouth of his hole. 
He was very thin, and probably correspondingly 
hungry after his long winter nap. We saw two 
gray squirrels, but no red squirrels or chipmunks. 
At the base of a boulder, in a moist wood, lay 
a garter snake. I caught him, and found his 
forked tongue, bright, defiant eyes, and tightly 
entwining folds all in the best possible working 
order. Near the end of our walk we found a 
grass-grown ants' iiest, formed of light soil piled 
into a conical heap a foot and a half high. Not 
thinking it possible that the hill was tenanted, I 
knocked away part of its top. Instantly, en- 
raged red ants came from the hidden chambers 
of their fortress, and in a sluggish way sought 
the intruder. I replaced the earth and mentally 
begged the ants' pardon. 

It was evening when we reentered Cambridge 
streets, well pleased with having seen eighteen 
kinds of birds, three kinds of mammals, two 
species of turtles, one snake, three species of 
butterflies or moths, and at least five other kinds 
of insects. 



THE VESPER SONG OF THE WOODCOCK. 

Easter Sunday fell tliis year on Mai^ch 29tli, 
and the joyous voices of wliite-robed choir boys 
made for the cities almost as sweet and praisef ul 
music as the children of the woods were making 
in Nature's own sanctuaries. On the afternoon 
of the day before Easter, I went to the ravine 
between Arlington and Lexington where hepa- 
tica grows. Walking from Arlington over the 
ridges near One Pine Hill, I heard frogs for the 
first time this year. Two kinds were singing, 
the shrill-voiced pi23ing hylas (hyla Picher- 
ingii) and the wood frogs (j^ana sylvatica). 
The latter at this season make a sound which 
recalls the thrumming of loosely strung banjo 
strings. The combined notes formed an effect- 
ive background of sound to the rollicsome sing- 
ing of song sparrows, tree sparrows, and red- 
winged blackbirds, and the love-music of the 
mated bluebirds. 

Wishing to capture a wood frog and make 
sure of his identity, I remained for many min- 
utes motionless on a stone in the middle of a 
shallow pool in the swamp. On my approach 



THE VESPER SONG OF THE WOODCOCK. 79 

every frog had gone to the bottom and hidden 
in the leaves and mud. The pool was lined 
with many layers of brown leaves, most of which 
preserved their outlines and told their names. 
Across them twigs and branches had fallen, and 
bits of lichen and moss had sunk there, too. 
Many specks were floating in the water. They 
seemed to move, some one way, some another. 
They were alive. Bending cldser over the 
water, I watched them attentively. Some moved 
quite evenly, others hitched across ^the pool by a 
series of jerky advances. There were lively red 
ones among them, contrasting with the darker, 
duller ones. Some were so minute that they 
could be seen only as a ray of light pierced the 
pool. As minutes passed and no frog moved, I 
grew weary and rose. Instantly a frog kicked 
among the leaves and mud, betraying by motion 
what his color had protected. A second later I 
had him, feebly squirming in my pocket. 

North of One Pine Hill a flock of thirty or 
more birds were feeding in a stubble field. 
They were j uncos and tree sparrows, in about 
equal numbers. The juncos did not say where 
they had been all winter. Only just out of my 
sight, perhaps, all the time. At five o'clock the 
ravine w^as reached. It was full of shadows, 
and the raw east wind had piled masses of cloud 
across the sky, making the sun's light pale and 



80 LAND OF THE LINGERING SNOW. 

uncertain. At tlie masthead of a leafless red 
maple sat a gray squirrel, " budding." Foolish 
thing, he sat still, thinking himself safe, while 
he was really the most conspicuous object in the 
ravine. Pounding upon the tree had no effect 
on him. Search for hepaticas revealed no 
flowers, and I did not find any until a trip to 
the Middlesex Fells on April 6th. The skunk- 
cabbage flowers were losing their beauty, yet the 
snow was still abundant in dark corners in the 
woods. Ten minutes in the chilly ravine was 
enough. A grouse startled me with her noisy 
flight as I left the gloom. From every hilltop 
crows were calling lustily. They were restless, 
and seemed moved by a common impulse. 
Reaching a high ledge, I watched them. About 
thirty were in sight in the tops of tall pines. 
Gradually they drew together on the next ridge 
to the north, about half a mile from me. One 
by one they droj^ped down into the woods out 
of sight. At last but two remained, still cawing. 
Then they became silent, and finally they also 
sank beneath the surface of the woods, and 
nothing more was heard of them. They w^ere 
like sparks in the ashes, going out one by one. 
At this moment the sun, which had been sinking 
behind stormy-looking rags of clouds, disap- 
peared behind the rounded shoulder of Wachu- 
sett. Then the sky dressed itself in gay colors. 



TEE VESPER SONG OF THE WOODCOCK. 81 

and the farewell to the clay was full of splendor. 
Wachusett, distant and pale blue, was flanked 
by two of the Lexington ridges heavily grown 
with pines. The mountain and its two dark 
guardians stood out sliarply against a background 
of the richest orange, deepening at the horizon 
to red. Above the mountain the sky was clear 
yellow until it reached a bank of slaty -blue 
cloud. The sunlight piercing this cloud bank 
flecked it with rose color, while drifting bits of 
cloud falling against the orange became bright 
like gold. Thanks to this gorgeous sunset, I 
lingered on the hill until darkness pervaded the 
woods. Then I ran down through a grove of 
oaks and came out in a damp meadow com- 
pletely surrounded by tall trees. The last song 
sparrow was singing good night. Across the 
west only a single band of orange light remained. 
In the zenith stars were beginning to shine. A 
strange cry came from the meadow grass. It 
recalled the night hawk's squawk, softened by 
distance. Again and again it came : " N'yah," 
then a pause, then " n'yah " again, and so on, 
until this had been uttered a dozen times. I 
drew nearer the spot from which this odd call 
came. Perhaps it was a frog of some kind ; per- 
haps a bird of the swamp. The sound ceased, 
but the next moment there seemed to be a musi- 
cal ringing in my ears which rapidly grew more 



82 LAND OF THE LINGERING SNOW. 

distinct, and then came clearly from the uj^per 
air, but from a point swiftly changing, appar- 
ently revolving. I fixed my mind intently 
upon the sound. It was a series of single musi- 
cal notes uttered rapidly by some creature fly- 
ing swiftly in an immense circle high over the 
meadow. It seemed as though the sky were a 
vast vaulted whispering gallery under whose 
dark blue dome a singing reed was being whirled 
round and round, dropping sweet bits of sound 
as it sped through the air. As I listened breath- 
lessly, this sound was smoothly changed into 
another. The creature was descending : its 
notes fell more slowly but more distinctly ; they 
were sweeter, rounder, more liquid. They came 
down, down, and then ceased, quenched in the 
damp grass. Almost at once, however, the 
" n'yah " began again at the same point in the 
meadow where it had been made before. This 
entire performance was repeated several times. 
The last time the nasal call was given twenty- 
four times and the aerial part was omitted. 
The performer was satisfied for the night. As 
he closed, the bells in Arlington struck seven. 

Those who know the plumi3 and meditative 
woodcock, gazing by the hour together down the 
line of his bill into black mud, will wonder with 
me that his courtship can arouse him to such 
airy fairy efforts, and at so romantic an hour. 



A TRIP TO HIGHLAND LIGHT. 

The morning of the first of April dawned 
like an Easter Sunday. The sky was clear, the 
sun warm, the air soft and full of the smell 
of spring. Taking the nine o'clock train from 
the Old Colony Station we rolled swiftly over 
the Quincy-Braintree levels with their wander- 
ing brooks and flooded swamps, down towards 
the sandy Cape country. At Bridgewater the 
train turned toward the east, and by eleven we 
passed the head of Buzzard's Bay, where the 
Cape Cod Canal is some day to be cut through, 
and entered upon the territory of the real Cape. 
The railway follows the inner curve of the 
Cape, the rounded cheek of Cape Cod Bay. At 
Sandwich, where we saw the melancholy and 
deserted buildings of the once prosperous glass 
works, we began to gain glimpses of dark blue 
water, with pale sand hills lining its shores. 

As we passed Barnstable and Yarmouth these 
momentary off -looks to the bay became more 
frequent. Between them, as we hurried through 
patches of low woods, we surprised anglers mak- 
ing the first cast of the newly opened season in 



84 LAND OF THE LINGERING SNOW. 

the sluggish brooks or small ponds which make 
this region famous for its trout. Brewster, 
Orleans, Eastham, and Wellfleet were traversed 
one by one, the train hitching to the left mile by 
mile until from pointing southeast it pointed east, 
then northeast, and finally north. We passed 
cranberry bogs by dozens ; stunted pine forests 
scorched by the railway fires ; windmills — 
some old and full of Dutch dignity, many new 
and bristling with Yankee ingenuity ; flocks of 
blackbirds on the flat hay-fields ; clouds of dry 
sand rising from the track ; views across the 
blue bay of blue skies and bluer shores reaching 
up to the mainland westward and northward. 

By a little after midday our eyes had spanned 
the placid inner waters of the bay and seen the 
long curving shore of Truro and Provincetown, 
its white hills and low cliffs flashing almost like 
chalk in the strong sunlight. Passing Well- 
fl.eet, — a large and busy-looking village, — we 
soon gained a narrower part of the Cape and 
began to point northwest instead of north, 
seeing sand-hills first on one side, then on 
the other. Truro is a long township, a block 
set on end in this pile of Cape republics. 
First came South Truro, then Truro, then a 
mile or two of bluffs along the bay shore with 
swift visions of feeding herring gulls on the flats, 
and forests of poles rising from the blue water. 



A TRIP TO HIGHLAND LIGHT. 85 

marking the fish traps of the dehided fishermen 
whose mackerel fleet has been swept from the 
sea by this sunken fleet of seine poles. Finally, 
North Truro was gained, four hours from Boston, 
and 114 miles by schedule. The bay was at our 
feet, with Barnstable, Plymouth, and Norfolk 
shores for its setting. There was the train run- 
ning away to Provincetown between white sand 
walls, pointing toward Boston, yet increasing its 
sand trail from it. Eastward there was a straight 
white road leading over low sand ridges and broad 
sand levels up to a tall white lighthouse a mile 
and a half away. It was Highland Light, hold- 
ing its great lenses high above the Atlantic, 
and casting its message of warning or welcome 
over many a wide league of restless water. The 
process of hauling a well-loaded carryall through 
even a short mile and a half of deep sand is 
painfid for horse and trying to half-starved 
traveller. Both rejoice when such a ride is over. 
At three o'clock we were standing at the foot 
of Highland Light, gazing on the novel land- 
scape which surrounds it. Toward the east the 
limitless ocean filled the eye. Half a dozen 
sails were in sight, but no covey of mackerel- 
men dotted the sea as in the days of Thoreau. 
The spot where we were standing was the storm- 
eaten margin of a cliff about 150 feet in height. 
The cliff is not rock, but sand and clay sur- 



86 LAND OF THE LINGERING SNOW. 

mounted by a tough layer of sod. As years 
roll by the cliff is eroded, a little by the sea, 
more by the ceaseless winds and frequent falling 
rains. The ruins of the cliffs lie at their feet. 
First masses of clay formed into mimic mountain 
spurs and buttress ridges, then heaps of white 
sand covered with coarse grass, finally, next the 
sea, the broad steep beach which looks as hard 
as marble, but when tested offers only soft and 
uncertain support to the foot. The clay debris 
is full of odd effects of color. White, gray, yel- 
low, orange, lead color, and black, burning in 
sunlight or crossed by heavy shadows, blend into 
combinations worthy of the Yellowstone region. 
On the upper edge of the cliffs close to the light- 
house a colony of bank swallows have lived 
through many generations of both men and birds. 
Their burrows aid the work of erosion. Look- 
ing either up or down the Atlantic shore the 
cliffs could be seen extending in uneven array 
above the beach. Southward they were broken 
in places where narrow valleys ran inland, 
reaching sometimes nearly across the Cape. 
Almost the whole of Truro south of the light- 
house is composed of sandhills well sodded or 
grown with stunted pitch-pines or oaks. The 
intervening valleys or interrupted hollows some- 
times contain tide rivers, but are more fre- 
quently dry. The hills are low, but as their 



A TRIP TO HIGHLAND LIGHT. 87 

pigmy forests have the general effect of large 
trees, the observer is constantly deceived as to 
proportions and distances. Many times dnring 
my stay I was startled to see an apparently 
gigantic man or colossal quadruped come into 
view upon the brow of a hill which my eyes had 
told me was a mile or two distant. In driving 
or walking, spaces w^ere covered so much more 
quickly than sight alone led me to expect, that I 
felt as though my legs must be the owners of 
the seven-league boots of old. Looking west- 
ward from the lighthouse, the charm of the 
view was not in the foreground of undulating 
pasture thickly grown with reindeer moss and 
tussocks of brown hudsonia^ but in the dis- 
tance. Cape Cod Bay has that lovely con- 
tour, that great curve of sand enclosing a mass 
of placid blue water, which makes a small bay 
a singularly attractive part of a sea picture. 
From Highland Light that day the bay seemed 
full of repose, ignorant of storm. 

Northward the shores of ocean and bay curved 
away from the east as though the storm winds had 
bent the end of the Cape round into the bay. 
Inside of this bent end lay Provincetown, its 
many windows flashing back the sunlight, and 
its several spires standing out clearly against the 
blue background. Between Provincetown and 
the ocean are dunes, not grass and lichen-grown 



88 LAND OF THE LINGERING SNOW. 

hills, but dunes like those at Ipswich beach, 
shifting, treacherous, menacing. The sunlight 
lay upon them as upon snow banks. 

Taking a sturdy Cape horse, unterrified by 
sandy roads or cross-country jaunts, we set out 
by a trail back of the cliffs for the picturesque 
country between Highland Light and Province- 
town. In a hollow behind the cliffs lay a life- 
saving station with its chain of telephone poles 
running from it both up and down the coast, and 
its sentry box perched upon the crest of the 
sandhill. From a dry field near it an Ipswich 
sparrow rose, flew a couple of rods, dropped 
beside a bunch of hudsonia, and then ran 
swiftly away behind its cover. Presently its 
whitish head appeared amid the grass at a dis- 
tance and remained motionless but watchful. 
Our trail ascended a slope and led into a forest 
of pigmy pitch-pines. They were about six 
feet high on an average, yet were said to be 
twenty years old. A flock of forty or fifty gold- 
finches sang and fed among them. Descending 
into a broad, level meadow lying just inside the 
cliffs, which, by this time, were becoming more 
dunes than cliffs, we found that a fire started 
intentionally among the coarse grass of the 
meadow had spread to the low pines and bushes 
on the sides of the hills. As the wind was 
east the smoke blew into and across the meadow, 



A TRIP TO HIGHLAND LIGHT. 89 

obscuring the view of the dunes in front of ns. No 
effort of mind or eyesight could make those dunes 
appear like anything smaller than mountains two 
thousand feet or more in height, and seven or eight 
miles distant. Even when some men appeared 
upon the nearer ridges and fought the fire, it 
was easier to imagine them giants than to reduce 
the dunes to their proper proportions. 

This meadow was alive with birds. Meadow 
larks, which are not larks but starlings, sang 
their sweet lament from every acre. With them 
were handsome redwing blackbirds, more noisy 
but less shy. The starlings rose at long dis- 
tances and, spreading their tails into white-edged 
fans, let their wings quiver and then sailed 
away, often over a ridge and out of sight. In 
giving his plaintive song the starling stops feed- 
ing, raises his head above the grass and shows 
to perfection his yellow breast and its bold 
black crescent. Song sparrows were on every 
side, and crows and gulls rose and fell behind 
the sandhills, where they were probably in sole 
possession of the ocean's edge with its wealth of 
seaweed and sea offal. 

After windino; throug:h more than a mile of 
meadow the road bent sharply to the left and 
passed through a crooked gap in the hills into 
a sandy amphitheatre several acres in extent. 
Here, surrounded by high grass-clad slopes, was 



90 LAND OF THE LINGERING SNOW. 

a picture of rural security and comfort. An old- 
fashioned farmhouse, in the midst of drooping 
willows, barns, sheds, cattle-yards, and fruit trees, 
stood near the sunny end of the hollow. At the 
eastern end was a large pool, thickly grown with 
stiff, interlacing bushes which rose from the water 
in the manner of the button-ball bushes. Around 
the farm buildings were cows, a bull with a large 
ring in his nose, hens, ducks, and turkeys. 
Around the pool were song sparrows, tree spar- 
rows, yellow-rumped warblers, crow blackbirds, 
and redwings. The air was full of their music 
and the clamor of the barnyard. The spot 
gave one the feeling that it must have a history. 
Indians, smugglers, pirates, patriot conspirators, 
exiled regicides, might one or all have made this 
nook a place of refuge. The oasis in the desert 
is seen from afar ; this spot of life was hidden 
in the bosom of the sandhills. 

While I was thinking thus the heavens sud- 
denly gave out an unearthly sound ; a drove of 
celestial jackasses, all braying at once, seemed 
coming afar from the sun's pastures. Shading 
my eyes, I discovered a multitude of dark specks 
connected like a chain, and advancing across the 
sky with a swaying, undulatory motion. They 
were wild geese flying a little north of east, and 
within three hundred feet of the ground. The 
farmer's dog barked vehemently at them. A 



A TRIP TO HIGHLAND LIGHT. 91 

shot rang out from behind the sandhills. The 
line of honking migrants wavered, but none 
fell. Just as they disappeared a second flock 
came within view and hearing in the west, and 
passed over us in the invisible wake left by the 
first. They seemed to be searching for a place 
to rest. The two flocks contained at least 
ninety-five birds. Walking round the little 
bush-grown pond we listened entranced to the 
medley music of the tree sparrows and their 
companions. The yellow-rumped warblers were 
probably birds which had wintered on the Cape, 
just as some others have spent this winter in 
Arlington, not far from Mystic Ponds. 

The farmer asked us to enter his cottage and 
see his collection of Indian stone relics picked 
up by him on the slopes and fields above the 
pool. We did so and found that he had gathered 
several hundred arrow and spear heads, cutting 
tools, hammers, bits of wampum and what he 
called fish-net sinkers. He took us to the field 
west of the pond and home acre, and bade us 
search with him for more relics. At the end 
of twenty minutes he had aided us in finding 
two or three arrowheads, several fragments show- 
ing clear indications of having been chipped, 
and one sinker. In this field a flock of thirty or 
forty horned larks were feeding ; they rose and 
flew, circled and came down again within fifty 



92 LAND OF THE LINGERING SNOW. 

yards of us. I, having failed to find even a 
broken arrowhead, felt inclined to suspect the 
larks of hiding them from me, as they trij^ped 
about over the ploughed land. 

Resuming our places in the carryall, we drove 
to the edge of a sand slope overlooking the broad 
meadow between us and Provincetown Harbor. 

The sunset hour was near and the bay flashed 
fire from a million waves. Provincetown, only 
a few miles away, looked warm and cosy on its 
neutral ground between pale dunes and blue 
waters. It' would seem less snug in an easterly 
gale in mid-winter. A broad placid sheet of 
fresh water lay between the sandhills and the 
bay shore. It is called the Eel-pond. It made a 
fair mirror for sunset lights. 

We drove home over the moors, as I felt like 
calling the wastes of undulating lichen-grown sand 
which formed the middle of the Cape at this point. 
The horse sped along regardless of roads, but 
keeping a sharp watch for the numerous holes 
dug in the sand by recent generations of hunters, 
who half bury themselves on this plateau at 
the fortunate times when the golden plover are 
passing on their hemispherical migration. The 
horse's feet crunched the reindeer moss, and 
knocked dust from the hudsonia or poverty 
grass, and pollen from the flowers of the corema. 
Presently we found in the tableland two deep 



A TRIP TO HIGHLAND LIGHT. 93 

bowl-shai^eJ hollows where twin icebergs had 
grounded side by side in the great ice age and 
met their melting death. Upon the narrow ridge 
between these " sink-holes " was a grave. Years 
ago a fisherman died of smallpox, and his body 
was placed there. A stranger burial spot one 
seldom sees. A mile further on we passed a 
lonely poplar tree which marks — not a man's 
grave, but the grave of a home. All trace of 
the house has gone, but mossgrown roads, a few 
broken bricks and the sentinel tree bear passing 
witness to a forgotten fireside ; a spot from which 
a fisherman went out day by day, and where an 
anxious heart beat for him in storms and per- 
haps mourned for him at last when his boat went 
down in the black waters off Race Point. Not 
far from this forsaken acre is a sink-hole of un- 
usual depth. The local name for it is full of 
color, — it is " Hell's Bottom." In spite of this 
name the pines which line the slopes of the hol- 
low flourish and are tall, and the pool of sweet 
water at its centre is a favorite resort for birds, 
the holy-crossbill included. Passing it, we saw 
above pygmy pines the pallid gleam of the High- 
land Light struggling with the glow of sunset. 
A wide valley seemed to separate us from the 
lio-ht, and the white tower seemed three hun- 
dred feet or more in height, but our Pegasus 
drew us over the valley in five minutes, and the 
light shrank to its proper size as we drew near. 



94 LAND OF THE L I KG E RING SXOW. 

About eiglit o'clock I was seated on tlie iron 
steps at the foot of the gTeat kerosene torch 
which stands inside the crumpled lenses of the 
Highland light. The lamp roared in its giant 
chimney. Prismatic colors swam throuo-h the 
lenses. The keepers told strange stories of 
storms, freaks of lightning, the trembling of their 
white tower in the gales, and the fate of birds 
which hurled themselves against the heavy glass 
of the outer windows of the tower. The base of 
the lantern and many parts of the interior and 
exterior of the lighthouse are scarred by light- 
ning. Once three ducks struck and shivered 
into splinters one of the thick panes of glass in 
the tower and fell dead and mangled at the foot 
of the lantern. The keeper said the sound of 
their striking was like the report of a gun. Out- 
side those windows, flashiuo- with lioht. all seemed 
intense darkness, — a gloom filled perhaps with 
flutterinof birds or the mino'led thouo:hts of those 
upon the ocean who watched from afar the great 
white light of the Truro sands. 

At sunrise on the mornino; of the second of 
April, I stood shivering in the chilly air, under 
the lee of a wrecked windmill not far from the 
lighthouse. The windmill has lost its wings, 
and storms have beaten holes in its sides. Half 
buried in the sand and sod lies one of its STOoved 
mill-stones. Half of the other forms the front 



A TRIP TO II I on LAND LIGHT. 95 

doorstep of a house near by. The mill was a 
kind giant in its time, but being too big to be 
set up in a bric-a-brac shop in town like its fussy, 
fairy neighbor the farmer's flax wheel, it is 
doomed to mingle with the shifting sand and be 
whirled away by the winds it once made labor. 

The sun had come up clear from the ocean. 
The east wind had an edge both keen and cold. 
Provincetown lay white and sparkling in the 
barb of the Cape. Song sparrows, robins, and 
meadow larks sang joyously. A wicked shrike 
sat on a stone on the hillside and poured out a 
jangling mixture of bluebird and brown thrush 
notes while it watched for victims from among 
the song sparrows. He never will sing his siren 
song to another sunrise. Through the pine woods, 
where skunk tracks dotted the sand patches, 
and down through a hollow to the beach we 
strolled before breakfast. Although the hollow 
was a deep one, we had to slide down fifty feet 
of soft cliff face before reaching the grassy 
upper beach, which in turn was several feet 
above the tide-washed sands. The beach is very 
soft, and walking upon it is laborious. The 
cliffs are not as picturesque from below as from 
above, and they reflect the sunlight disagreeably 
in earlv mornins:. A dead skate, the half feath- 
ered skeleton of a kittiwake gull, and a ripe ba- 
nana constituted nearly the whole of the objects 



96 LAND OF THE LINGERING SNOW. 

of interest on tlie shore. The banana had a re- 
markably rich flavor, thanks perhaps to its sea 
bath. Twenty crows retreated down the beach 
ahead of us. They live well and grow fat on the 
harvest of death cast up by the waves. We left 
the shore at the life-saving station where mortar 
drill had just been performed. A man on a 
mast set in the sand has the life line fired to 
him, he hauls out the breeches-buoy, and an im- 
aginary shipwrecked crew is sent ashore across 
imaginary breakers. The station was as neat, 
clean and shining as a flagship, and more com- 
fortable by far than most New England farm- 
houses. 

Later in the forenoon we drove for three 
hours through Truro and South Truro, seeing 
many quaint cottages ; dwarf apple orchards re- 
minding me of Thoreau's description of them ; 
a tide river in which a man was prodding at 
random for eels and occasionally bringing one 
out squirming on his trident ; thousands of pitch- 
pine trees planted by hand in rows ; a sunny 
hillside covered with oaks, checkerberry plants 
and arbutus, the latter bearing the first flowers 
of the year; and a black snake dozing in the 
sand by the wayside. He, being heavy with 
winter slumber, was caught, measured, and found 
to lie four feet four inches without stretching. 
His teeth were long and sharp. Being given 



A TRIP TO HIGHLAND LIGHT. 97 

bis freedom unhurt he rewarded us by some 
brilliant tree climbing, during which he glided 
up a trunk, in and out among branches, and 
along limbs from tree to tree. I hope he will 
do no harm during the new term of life which 
we gave him. 

A little after two o' clock we said adieu to 
North Truro, the fair lighthouse, the cliffs, the 
heaving Atlantic, and the plaintive starlings. 
As we rolled homeward along the bay shore 
hundreds of black ducks flew, swam, or sat 
motionless upon the quiet water. Gulls by scores 
fed on the bars or frolicked in the sky. Clouds 
gathered, the air grew colder, and by midnight 
Massachusetts was in the midst of one of the 
fiercest storms of the year. 



THE CURRENT OF MUSKETAQUID. 

Monday, the 6th of April, found me, with a 
friend who lives close to nature's heart, floating 
down the current of Musketaquid. We launched 
a liaht Rushton boat at the feet of the Minute- 
Man, and were swept past him, by the battle- 
ground, in the tide and through the eddies which 
Thoreau knew so well and has made immortal. 
On that morning bright with sunshine yet cold 
with the breath of snowbanks on Wachusett, it 
was Thoreau's spirit more than that of the fight- 
in of farmers or fanciful Hawthorne which seemed 
to rule the Old Manse ground, the ancient trees 
along the water's edge, the swirling river, the 
singing blackbirds, and the landscape of willows, 
hills, and distant woods. As we were taking 
out the boat from its house, a downy woodpecker 
drummed for his mate's enjoyment on the sound- 
ing branches and trunk of a dead tree at the 
water's edge. He made three different tones on 
his drum. A white-bellied nuthatch was going 
from tree to tree calling loudly. His home of 
last year had been cut down, and he seemed to 



THE CURRENT OF MUSKETAQUID. 99 

be searching for it. A pair of chickadees passed 
by and exchanged greetings with the nuthatch. 
Song sparrows in all directions were singing. 
Now and then the wild note of a cowbird and 
the more distant and plaintive call of a meadow 
starling came to our ears. Robins were abun- 
dant and noisy. 

As our boat floated down the river and turned 
a bend towards the arched stone bridge I glanced 
back and saw a man with a gun standing on a 
ledge above us. I opened my lips to call my 
friend's attention to him, when a second glance 
showed me that it was the Minute-Man, secure 
on his pedestal and not climbing over the nearer 
rocks, as he seemed to be. The current under 
the bridge was very strong, and for the gentle 
Musketaquid, very swift. It required dexterous 
paddling to keep a straight course through the 
central arch. Beyond the bridge the river lost 
itself in flooded meadows. To one familiar with 
its rightful banks, a bunch of willows, an elm 
and a maple or two told the secret of its course. 
But to me it seemed that we were entering a 
beautiful lake, which promised to grow wider 
and fairer the longer we sailed upon it. Com-r 
fortable farmhouses stood upon the higher 
ground and looked down at the unruly stream. 
Perhaps they recalled the days before the Lowell 
dams, when the river was a friend and not a 



100 LAND OF THE LINGERING SNOW. 

tyrant to their fair intervales. Along the shel- 
tered furrows in the ploughed fields and against 
the cold side of stone walls ribbons of white 
snow lay in hiding from the sun. Even in the 
streets of Concord we had seen good-sized drifts, 
and piles under roof angles. The storm of the 
Friday previous, which along the coast brought 
rain, had turned to snow here, while further in- 
land many inches of snow had fallen, blocking 
roads and breaking wires. The west wind blow- 
ing across this wintry stretch of country came 
to us well whetted. 

From one sloping field it brought us the med- 
ley music of a flock of over sixty redwings. As 
we listened to the distant choir a rich undercur- 
rent of sound came to us. " Wild geese," I ex- 
claimed. My friend shook his head doubtfully, 
but paddled ashore to see whether blackbirds 
really composed the whole orchestra. We found 
them on a patch of high meadow, some in the 
trees singing, others on the ground feeding. All 
rose and whirled like a puff of burnt paper in 
the breeze. Then they settled again, and the 
deeper notes in their medley came to us once 
more like the far-off honking of geese. Then we 
floated on by meadow and brier patch ; thickets 
of birch in which the faint spring tints were be- 
ginning to grow clearer and stronger ; ploughed 
fields over which juncos flashed their white V's; 



THE CURRENT OF MUSKETAQUID. 101 

bunches of pitch-pines almost as rich as savins 
in their olive-green coloring ; ancient orchards 
in which respectable families of bluebirds still re- 
side untroubled by the emigrant sparrow ; single 
graceful elms on whose finger tips dangled the 
gray purses of last year's orioles ; fringes of wil- 
lows bearing their pussies, a few of which showed 
their yellow stamens just projecting; and maples 
on whose highest twigs balanced the resident red- 
wings, running over with rippling laughter. My 
friend spoke of a theory that all bird music is 
imitative of the sounds best known to the spe- 
cies, and said that the notes of the redwings 
seemed to bear out this pretty hypothesis, hav- 
ing the sound of water running through their 
sweet measures. 

Gliding across a placid bay in the meadow we 
came to a wooded shore where a noble oak had 
just been slain. We landed, and kneeling by its 
stump counted the year rings. At first it had 
grown slowly, its young life trembling in the 
balance ; then it gained strength, and the rings 
were broader and more firmly marked ; some- 
times narrower ones suggested years of drought ; 
then as our count rose to a hundred, the rings 
grew closer and closer, as though life passed by 
very fast in those years. In all, the oak must 
have lived one hundred and twenty-five years, and 
have heard the echo of those musket shots which 



102 LAND OF THE LINGERING SNOW. 

marked the dawn of Independence, the sunrise 
guns of American Freedom. My friend looked 
very grave when he saw that this tree was gone. 
It had been a landmark, not only on the shore 
of Musketaquid, but on the shore of his life, of 
which a precious part had been spent on this 
river of flooded meadows. Above the oak rose 
a bold headland crowned with plumelike pines. 
It was Ball's Hill, which Thoreau called *' the 
St. Ann's of Concord." We sought the top and 
looked down upon the fair picture below us. 
Great Meadows, the " broad moccasin print," 
was one rippling lake, dotted with islands or 
single trees. The river, from the stone arch 
bridge, just passed, down to Carlisle bridge with 
its wooden piers, had merged its life in this 
blue archipelago. The distant tower of Bedford 
church recalled my melting walk of a month ago, 
when over the snowdrifts the sun of March had 
nearly burned my eyes out and quite scorched 
the skin from my lips and cheeks. Early spring 
in Massachusetts is a crab-like thing, but it has 
its charms. In a ploughed field behind the bluff, 
we found fox tracks, and under a lofty pine, 
pellets of mouse hair, which some owl (or crow 
perhaps) had cast from its mouth undigested. 

Taking boat once' more we wound in and out 
along the northern shore. Here, fox sparrows 
scratched in the bushes and paused surprised at 



THE CURRENT OF MUSKETAQUID. 103 

the silent monster slipping past tliem on the 
lake. There, a shy grouse with ruff wide spread 
watched us a moment from beneath a proud 
oak's shade, and then tiptoed away cackling her 
alarm until the shelter of the great boll gave 
her a chance to fly. Above, a red-shouldered 
hawk mewed, and glass in hand we saw him and 
his mate rise hundreds of feet into the sky, until 
one was lost in spinning motes of light, and the 
other, setting her wings, sped down the chute of 
sky miles away in the northeast. At last, best 
of all, on the eastern edge of the meadows sev- 
eral snow-white specks were seen upon the water. 
" Sheldrakes," whispered my companion. They 
were a quarter of a mile away, but seemed to 
have seen or heard us, for they were restless. 
Several times one of the males rose in the water 
and flapped his wings. Then all took wing and 
made four or five spirals in the air, ending by 
disappearing behind a distant growth of birches. 
" There is a pond in there," said my friend, 
" with flooded meadows which lead to it." Keep- 
ing perfect silence we paddled swiftly across the 
dancing water to the opposite shore. There the 
groves opened for us, and a narrow belt of shal- 
lows led into an inner meadow. The ducks were 
not in it. Crossing it, another opening was found 
leading to a third lake. As we entered this 
strait I caught an alder bough, and held the 



104 LAND OF THE LTNGERING SNOW. 

boat fast, for not more than two hundred yards 
from us were the five ducks floating tranquilly 
in the sheltered lagoon. So silent had been our 
approach, that although the wind was behind us, 
the ducks did not suspect our coming. Our 
glasses made the beautiful creatures seem only 
a few rods distant, and we watched them closely. 
One of them was a black or dusky duck, the 
most abundant species at this season. The other 
four were mergansers, called also goosanders, 
fish ducks, or sheldrakes. Two were males, two 
females ; the drakes had lustrous bottle-green 
heads, and bodies which appeared snowy white. 
They were enjoying the sunlight, and drifting 
along slightly with the wind. The black duck 
kept with them, yet a little apart, — a duck, yet 
not one of the family. They preened themselves, 
and soft white feathers floated lightly away upon 
the ripples. When we had watched long enough, 
a blow upon the gunwale alarmed the flock. 
They swam a few feet, first one way, then an- 
other. Every motion showed alertness. A sec- 
ond sound booming across the water started 
them. Their wings dashed the waves into foam- 
ing furrows several feet long ; then with steady 
flight they rose in a long diagonal and passed 
out of sight behind the birches. But only four 
flew. Sweeping the water with our glasses we 
discovered the black duck still floating upon its 



THE CURRENT OF iMUSKETAQUID. 105 

surface. We pushed the boat forward into the 
lagoon, and the moment he h)cated the danger 
he rose without a splash and was gone. 

Rowing back to the Carlisle side we found a 
snug corner by a jolly little brook which danced 
across a pasture down to a meadow, between the 
rubble walls of an ancient sluice, through the 
pine woods and into Great Meadows. Over the 
brook stood an oak ; in the oak sat a bluebird ; 
from the bluebird's inmost soul poured the 
sweetest of bird music, and, wonderful to relate, 
this music as it fell upon the air turned into 
goldfinches which undulated over the pasture, 
finally rested upon the oak and added their songs 
to the general joy of the occasion. It may be 
said by harsh commentators that goldfinches 
never could have been made out of bluebirds' 
music. Then the burden is on tliem to prove 
where the goldfinches come from, for to our 
eyes they came from the air, which had nothing 
in it except the song of the bluebird. After 
lunch and a wonderful concert in which the blue- 
bird sang the solo and the goldfinches did every- 
thing else to make it perfect, we examined the 
ancient sluice. The stone work was rough and 
without cement. The dam was of earth and 
from it grew several oaks, one of which may 
have taken root fifty years ago. As we mused 
about the dam and its history, a broad-winged, 



106 LAND OF THE LINGERING SNOW. 

bluish-gray bird nearly as large as an eagle 
sailed swiftly over the meadow. Its course was 
low, only a foot or two above the grass, and as 
waving from side to side as the letter S. It was 
a marsh hawk sweeping the low lands for mice 
and frogs. As we walked across the grass he 
had been inspecting, we found it dotted with 
small piles of fresh earth apparently thrown up 
by some burrowing animal working from beneath 
the sod. There were also scores of runways or 
grooved passages under the matted grass. In 
places our feet sank into subterranean chambers, 
and in fact the whole field seemed to have been 
honeycombed by moles, or meadow mice (ar- 
vicola pennsylvanicus). The harrier was not 
the only bird interested in this field of mice. 
Under almost every one of nearly a dozen old 
apple trees growing near by we found " owl pel- 
lets," the egg-shaped masses of undigested fur, 
feathers, teeth and bones which owls habitually 
eject from their mouths when well fed. 

A quarter of a mile farther on we came to a 
stubble field near the banks of Great Meadows. 
A stubble fi.eld, with a stone wall and a fringe 
of bushes round it, is a fine place for migrating 
sjmrrows. Fully a hundred birds were feeding 
in this field or singing in the trees which bor- 
dered it. They were fox sparrows and juncos, 
and it would be impossible to say which were in 



THE CURRENT OF MUSKETAQUID. 107 

the majority. We crept up to tliem gradually 
until all had retreated to the trees at one corner 
of the field. Then we merged ourselves in the 
stone wall and its brambles and bushes, and re- 
mained motionless. One by one the birds drew 
nearer. I imitated the shrill singing of a canary. 
They began to sing, and the more distant birds 
flew boldly over us and into the weeds in the 
field. Soon the air was full of them, passing 
close to our heads. When they were settled, we 
crossed the wall and crawled along behind it 
until we were within ten feet of some of the fox 
sparrows. These we watched through the cracks 
in the wall, and saw them scratch with both feet 
in the earth and dry leaves. A hen scratches 
with one foot at a time. These birds hitch back- 
wards on both feet, twitching their wings at the 
same moment and moving both feet together, 
although not often exactly side by side. A few 
of them sang their full song close by us. It is a 
wonderful performance, full of strength, variety 
and brilliancy. When the hermit thrush sings 
I feel as though the pine forest had been trans- 
formed into a cathedral, in which the power of an 
organ or the rich voice of a contralto singer was 
bringing out the essence of the mass. When 
the fox sparrow sings, the effect is entirely dif- 
ferent. The quality of the music seems joyous, 
not pathetic : that of the grand piano rather than 



108 LAND OF THE LINGERING SNOW. 

of tlie organ ; tliat of the dance and sunlight 
rather than that of vespers. As a maker of 
brilliant, vivacious music the fox sparrow stands 
among the first. It deserves a place in the list 
of the ten finest New England bird singers. In 
voice, costume and manners the bird betrays 
noble birth. It is a pity that it does not nest 
within the limits of our country. 

Tearing ourselves away from the sparrows, we 
returned to our boat. On the bits of driftwood 
lining the shore I found multitudes of little 
creatures which I could not distinguish from snow 
fleas. If they are not the same they must be 
next of kin to the jolly little winter bristletails. 
The voyage back toward the sunset was not 
eventful. A flock of black ducks passed up- 
stream, flying higli and at wonderful speed. 
They are far from graceful, but they give one 
the impression of immense power of wing. Had 
this flock been well harnessed I think they could 
have drawn me with them out of sight in golden 
haze much faster than would have been comfort- 
able. Redwings sang in every tree top. Crows 
took long flights, cawing as they flew. Chicka- 
dees in pairs responded to the phoebe note so well 
mimicked by my companion. Muskrats swam in 
the eddies of the stream. We saw two swim- 
ming fast round and round a bunch of maples 
standing alone in the water. They paid little 



THE CURRENT OF MUBKETAQ.U ID. 109 

attention to us as we passed. As we reached 
the Minute-Man the chill of the western snows 
came upon us more keenly. The coloring of 
sky, woods and river was exquisite. The mass 
of the heavens was deep blue. Upon it flakes of 
cloud rested, taking from the sun the glory of 
gold and of crimson. Low down in the east a 
bank of very dark blue clouds made a rich back- 
ground for the stems of the gleaming birches and 
the burnished twigs of the willows. Just where 
the sun sank, gold and orange and crimson min- 
gled to form a gateway through which the day 
was slowly withdrawing. As we stood under 
the great elms by the Manse the river repeated 
the story of the sky. Had Lohengrin floated 
westward over the gilded water towards that 
gateway I should have bent my head without 
surprise to catch those few soul-moving notes by 
which he says " Farewell." 



A BIT OF COLOR. 

Thursday, April 16, at five o' clock in the 
afternoon, I reached the shores of Fresh Pond 
at the point where a branch of the Fitchburg 
railway crosses the Concord turnpike. This part 
of Cambridge is soon to be changed in many- 
ways, and is worth a particular description. 
From the Cambridge Common to the northeast 
corner of Fresh Pond, Concord Avenue runs 
almost directly northwest. Beyond this point 
it bends twenty-five degrees towards the west 
and continues in that line until it reaches Bel- 
mont. In the hollow of this bend, resting on 
Fresh Pond, lies one of the most picturesque bits 
of ground in Cambridge. It was formerly the 
estr.te of Frederick Tudor, the ice king. A 
beautiful lawn many acres in extent is fringed 
with lofty hard - wood trees, many of which 
are dying, but all of which are beautiful and 
worthy of careful preservation and exemp- 
tion from all but the most necessary trim- 
ming. On the water front at the northeastern 
corner of the pond are two immense ice-houses, 
now condemned and doomed to early destruc- 



A BIT OF COLOR. Ill 

tion. Perhaps when they are gone it will be 
remembered that they were picturesque. One, 
with its buttressed brick walls coated with green 
lichens and overhung by a projecting upper story 
of gray wood, always reminds me of a gloomy 
picture I have seen of an Algerian walled town. 
The other, overhanging the pond, raises a tall 
gray tower against the sky, and looks down upon 
deep water through which broken piles emerge 
to cast black shadows in the mist. When these 
ice-houses are empty they are sepulchral and 
forbidding places to enter. The least sound 
awakes echoes in the darkness of the roof. Eng- 
lish sparrows flit about and scream, and the air 
is heavy with dampness and as cold as a tomb. 
On Thursday afternoon I turned in from Con- 
cord Avenue toward these ice-houses, following 
the freight track, which runs directly towards 
them, forming a barrier between Fresh Pond and 
a foul swamp which fills, with the Tudor place, 
the bend in the avenue. The swamp is a thicket 
of willows, button - ball bushes, and birches. 
The early willows were in full bloom, their 
bright yellow staminate and green pistillate 
flowers swaying in the wind. Late willows 
were beautiful with their small pink-white 
pussies and unfolding leaves crowded on slender 
stems. Here and there a tall red maple raised 
its branches over the swamp and displayed its 



112 LAND OF THE LINGERING SNOW. 

gorgeous flowers in the pale sunliglit. The grass, 
only a few days ago burned over by the frugal 
but short-sighted city workmen, was brilliantly 
green, and in places four or five inches long. 
When July suns beat down upon its roots it 
may miss its mat of protecting fibres destroyed 
by fire. A fox sparrow was scratching among 
the grass roots energetically. Several redwings, 
song sparrows, and a large flock of English spar- 
rows were at work on the ground near by. From 
the sw^amp the music of song sparrows and red- 
wings was incessant. 

Passing between the ice-houses and the shan- 
ties and hen houses which stand on the opposite 
side of the track I gained the fringe of lofty 
trees on the Tudor place. A flicker was guard- 
ing her house in a hollow maple. Now, she 
poked her head out and " flickered " for her 
mate. Then, he answering not, she came out 
and drummed furiously on the dead resonant 
wood by her door post. At last his answer 
came from a distant tree and she flew away to 
find him. A female sparrow hawk darted from 
her nest in the deep hollow of an inaccessible 
limb, and flew with marvellous grace into the 
open, wheeled, and dropped upon the out- 
stretched finger of one of the tallest trees of this 
tall grove. Her mate joined her and perched 
for a second beside her, while a queer whining 



A BIT OF COLOR. 113 

chatter came from them. Their coloring is as 
beautiful as that of the fox sparrow, and if they 
cannot revive the fainting heart by song, they 
can give the eye joy by their speed, their perfect 
grace of flight, and the beauty of their outlines. 

On the further side of the neglected lawn 
nearly a hundred purple grackles were feeding 
in the grass. They rose, blurring the sky in the 
north, and darkened the tops of a dozen trees 
where they perched and " creaked " in disgust at 
my coming. 

Looking across the pond the further shores 
showed but dimly. A strong east wind had 
been blowing all day, and the air was heavy with 
the grayness of the sea. ■. The water was metallic 
in its lights and shadows, its points of reflected 
fire and stripes of darkness. Distant banks of 
birches and willows showed faint tones of green, 
red, and yellow through the silver veil of the 
chilly air. Mount Saint Joseph stood up dark 
and strong in the middle of the opposing shore, 
its hemlocks and pines yielding black reflec- 
tions in the sullen water. A train rolled along 
across Concord Avenue, and stopped at the Fresh 
Pond station. Its outlines were vague and its 
smoke seemed part of the gray air, until an open 
furnace door sent a flood of orange light up 
through it, and revealed its writhings and alter- 
nations of whiteness and blackness as the train 
pulfed on towards the setting sun. 



114 LAND OF THE LINGERING SNOW. 

I left the Tudor place and kept on round the 
pond. First I came to an ugly wound in the 
high bank, where gravel is being cut away to fill 
" Black's Nook." Then I passed in order the 
half-filled Nook, the white ice-houses of the Fresh 
Pond Ice Company, the great gravel banks on 
the western side of tlie pond, the swamp full of 
blazing red maples, almost as gay in their blos- 
soms as in their ripened foliage last autumn ; 
the "geyser" where Stony Brook water, after 
its long journey underground from the land of 
Norumbega, bursts out in clustered jets and falls 
foaming into Fresh Pond, and finally Mount 
Saint Joseph itself, none the less picturesque 
because the white caps of the Sisters are occa- 
sionally to be seen flitting back and forth amid 
its shrubbery. The white caps and their school 
buildingf are doomed to banishment under the 
law of eminent domain, and in a few months 
they, like the ice-palaces of the Tudors, will 
have been made over to the past. 



THE CONQUEST OF PEGAN HILL. 

Looking southward from the heights above 
Arlington, Belmont and Waltham, the distant 
horizon is bounded at one point by a wooded 
ridge having a bold outline and, to the explorer, 
a most challengeful air. Contour map and com- 
pass declared this ridge to be Pegan Hill, the 
dominant height of the Needham - Natick re- 
gion. Taking the 8 o'clock train on the " Woon- 
socket division," which in my mind had previ- 
ously been classed with the " Saugus branch " 
as a railway snare to be avoided, I sought on 
April 18 the unknown town of Dover. My 
companion was a determined man who years ago 
had registered a vow to climb Pegan Hill or 
perish among its cliffs and forests. 

The early morning of April 18 was gray and 
somewhat chilly. My friend brought an um- 
brella and overcoat, I wore rubber boots and an 
overcoat. By noon the mercury had passed 80^ 
and was still vigorous. 

As we left the train, maps in hand, Pegan 
Hill was reported to bear due west. We raised 
our eyes to meet the challengeful foe. A broad 



116 LAND OF THE LINGERING SNOW. 

meadow clad in the tender green of freshly 
sprouting grass was encircled by comfortable 
farms whose ploughed fields, orchards, elms and 
scattered buildings framed it pleasantly. A pair 
of brooks wandered across it, met, pledged eter- 
nal friendship and passed on united, singing, 
looking up blue-eyed towards heaven. High in 
the air white-bellied swallows revelled in the 
sunlight. The sweet-breathed west wind bore 
to us the kindred songs of the ]3urple finch and 
the vesper sparrow, the plaint of the meadow 
lark, the drumming of the downy woodpecker 
and the cawing of the crow. In a pine grove 
near by, the pine-creeping warbler and the chip- 
ping sparrow contrasted their monotonous repe- 
titions of a single note, the one giving a smooth, 
well-rounded trill, the other a sharper, more 
pointed one. Beyond the meadow and the farms 
lay a sunny pasture hillside, crossed horizontally 
by a stone wall, and sparsely marked by pitch- 
pines and small savins. The sky-line of this 
gentle slope was curved, drumlin-like. West- 
ward there was nothing more to see save blue 
sky and four cowbuntings flying swiftly across 
it. Where was the tree-crowned rocky summit 
we had come to conquer ? The redwings an- 
swered, " Cong-ka-ree, go and see ! " So we 
strolled onward across the meadow, through the 
farms and up the slope of the pasture hill. 



THE CONQUEST OF PEG AN HILL. 117 

The air was filled with a silvery haze which 
made distance mysterious, and the nearer land- 
scape dreamy and full of suggestions of Indian 
summer. The songs of field sparrows rippled 
continuously across the hillside. A pigeon 
woodpecker " flickered " persistently in a grove 
of ma23les and chestnuts. While standing be- 
hind a stone wall and half concealed hy its reti- 
nue of bushes we heard a rippling warbler-song 
and caught a flash of gold and green in a bar- 
berry bush close at hand. A slender bird about 
five inches long, golden olive-brown above and 
rich yellow beneath, paused in the barberry for 
us to watch him. As he moved his dainty head 
we saw that his crown was reddish chestnut, and 
as he threw up his head to sing we saw that his 
breast and sides were lightly pencilled with a 
similar shade. Although I had heard the pine 
warbler sing, this, a yellow red-poll warbler, was 
the first of the great migrating family of Sylvi- 
colidce which I had met this spring. As my 
heart grew warm towards him a crow and a 
dashinof little falcon rose from behind the hill 
and whirled together in the air. We promptly 
forgot the tin}^ warbler, dropped behind the 
wall, and fixed our glasses on the falcon, which 
had alighted on the highest plume of a low pitch- 
pine. Suddenly it swooped to the ground, 
caught an insect from the grass, and came to a 



118 LAND OF THE LINGERING SNOW. 

treetop nearer us. As it alternately caught 
grasshoppers and perched to eat them and watch 
for more, we crept from bush to bush nearer 
to the circle of its hunting-ground. Several 
times it came within gunshot, and as we saw it 
from all points of view, its rich coloring was 
clearly revealed. The top of its head and its 
tail were brilliant chestnut. Its back was cinna- 
mon, its breast light and finely barred on the 
sides. Around its throat it seemed to wear a 
collar formed of alternate bars of black and 
white. Its head was small, its whole bearing 
alert, graceful, supple. After watching it for 
some time we perceived that its mate was hunt- 
ing in much the same manner part way down 
the slope of the hill. The birds were sparrow 
hawks in the perfection of spring plumage. 

One of their perches was a- rude tripod made 
of joist. This marked the summit of the hill 
which we had reached almost without knowing 
it. Seated at its foot we looked north, east, 
south and west over the fair meadows, fields and 
groves of the Charles River valley. The me- 
andering river itself was in sight in every quar- 
ter but the southeast, and there its tributaries 
formed an interlacing barrier. But where was 
Pegan Hill ? We consulted the map. 

Due north of us were Lake Waban, Wellesley, 
and Wellesley College. Across the north and 



THE CONQUEST OF PEG AN HILL. 119 

part of the east the river, its vivid green 
meadows, and its ruddy maples led the eye 
along. Natick and Sherborn, the one a grow- 
ing town, the other a tract of farms and pleasant 
glimpses of blue water, filled the west. To the 
south the view was limited, being cut short 
by several rocky ridges of unattractive outlines 
and vegetation, which our map said were Clark 
Hill and Pine Rock Hill. The centre of all 
this country which our eyes delighted to rest 
upon, so full was it of beautiful tints, was 
marked plainly Pegan Hill. A bloodless vic- 
tory ! We had sought the enemy with mighty 
preparations, and behold he had kissed our feet, 
and made himself our footstool. The ridge 
which had attracted our eyes from Prospect Hill 
we felt sure was Pine Rock Hill, equal in height 
with Pegan, but covered with a sparse growth 
of small deciduous trees promising neither birds, 
flowers, nor other inducements for a climb. 

At the foot of the hill on the northern side we 
found some charming spots on the borders of the 
Charles. One was on the Needham side of the 
river, where an extensive grove of stately old- 
growth white pines overhung a sharp bend in the 
stream, making its deep and swift current very 
dark in contrast to a flat bit of meadow opposite, 
which was radiant with tender green of newly 
sprouted grass. A grouse rose from a cool brook 



120 LAND OF THE LINGERING SNOW. 

hollow near this bend. A pewee called to us as she 
hurried through the grove. A flock of five white- 
bellied swallows cut swift circles against the 
kindly sky. The voice of the west wind in the 
ancient pines sang a song full of rest and con- 
tentment, and for us, as for the river, it was 
pleasant and purifying to linger there before 
going on to the friction and the pollution of the 
city. In all that day's wandering I saw no sign 
of terror in any living thing that was not caused 
by man. Nature by herself is not all peace, by 
any means, but she is far nearer to it than when 
man is present. 

On the edge of these beautiful pines, as at 
several other points in our walk, my friend and 
I were angered to find the largest and finest 
trees selected as posting places for advertise- 
ments ; cloth, paper, wood, and metal signs telling 
of the supposed merits of certain Boston firms 
and daily newspapers, having been nailed to the 
trees. It is hard to say which fact is most dis- 
agreeable to contemplate, the boldness of the 
advertisers in disfiguring private property, or 
the indifference of the public to the damage 
done. 

Following up the Charles through the pines 
we reached the Sudbury River aqueduct, and 
from the top of its sodded embankment gained 
a near view of Wellesley and its castles of 



THE CONQUEST OF PEG AN HILL. 121 

learning. Looking across the meadows of 
Dewing Brook, never greener than at that 
moment, we were charmed by the distant pic- 
ture of feeding cattle, boys fishing in the brook, 
snug and well-fashioned farm buildings, lofty 
shade trees in full bloom, and behind them the 
clustered buildings of the college and the town. 
It might have been a mellow fragment of old 
England but for the bunch of very new, dirty, 
and disorderly shanties which appeared in one 
corner of the picture to remind us that New 
England is also New Ireland. Entering the 
town, we made our way to the railway station 
with speed and directness. As it was Saturday 
afternoon a fair share of the eight hundred 
students (or a share of the eight hundred fair 
students) were in the streets, walking, driving, 
bicycling, catching trains for town, exercising 
dogs, and otherwise disporting themselves. My 
companion being a bachelor, still in moderate 
years, I sighed with relief when our train started 
and I had him safely penned in a front seat 
next the window. 



WOOD DUCKS AND BLOODROOT. 

The maple swamps of Alewlfe Brook are 
places rich in birds, but they are even richer in 
foul odors. They are not pleasant at any hour, 
least of all at sunrise. In order to go from 
Cambridge in the early morning into any other 
woods than these, it is necessary to walk quite a 
long distance, or else to take the first train 
which goes out from Boston over the Fitchburg 
tracks. On April 20 I caught this train at 
Hill's Crossing at 6.41 a. M., having walked out 
Concord Avenue to the Tudor place, round the 
northern edge of Fresh Pond, past the slaughter- 
house opposite Black's Nook and over the mead- 
ows to the little station. The walk was charm- 
ing, for at that early hour there were more birds 
than men in Cambridge streets, and the men 
were laborers, with earnest faces, strong arms, 
and brown hands, who seemed close to the soil 
and its secrets. In the Harvard Observatory 
grounds a ruby-crowned kinglet was singing. 
Less than an inch longer than a humming bird, 
this little creature has one of the most delightful 



WOOD DUCKS AND BLOODROOT. 123 

sonsrs known to New Eno^land woods. It is 
very kind of it to sing here when its breeding 
ground may be two or three hundred miles 
north of us. 

The Fresh Pond trees and fiekls were alive 
with birds. Two pairs of flickers were " flick- 
ering ; " robins ran on the gTound, shouted in 
the apple-trees, chased each other through the 
air ; meadow starlings, redwings, and purple 
grackles could be heard and seen in all 
parts of the Tudor place. White - bellied 
swallows danced across the sky, and the harsh 
rattle of the kin2;fisher marked the flight of that 
vigorous bird over the waters of the pond. The 
dry note of the chipping sparrow was incessant 
and wearisome, but when the sparrow hawks left 
their favorite corner and flew with their match- 
less grace through the grove and across the field, 
chipping sparrows were forgotten, 

I reached Waverley Oaks as the village clock 
struck seven. In the meadow between Beaver 
Brook and the railway embankment quantities of 
watercress were growing, horsetails stood four 
inches high, and a jolly dandelion turned its 
round face to the sun, Horsechestnut leaves 
were open on the 10th, and here in the meadow 
the ferns were setting free their coils, and leaves 
on many of the early shrubs were open. Was the 
bloodroot in bloom ? that was the question of 



124 LAND OF THE LINGERING SNOW. 

the morning. Along the wall between Beaver 
Brook and tlie Oaks white buds were pointing 
heavenward by hundreds. In a spot where the 
sunlight fell the flowers were opening, and as 
the warmth of the rays grew stronger, half 
the glorious company opened their bright eyes 
to the lovely spring morning. There are few 
flowers with more j)urity in their faces than 
bloodroot. They are made to admire and love 
growing, not picked. If torn from their roots 
their dark blood stains the picker's hand, and 
soils the fair petals of the flowers themselves ; 
even if tenderly borne to a vase they quickly 
drop their petals, as though mourning their 
home under the shadow of the barberry bushes. 
Seated among these delicate children of the 
soil, my back against an elm trunk and my 
figure obscured by the drooping branches of a 
bush, I watched the birds among the oaks, and 
near the small pond at the foot of the kame on 
which some of the oaks grow. The voices of 
robins, song and chipping sparrows, cow birds, 
redwings, flickers, and bluebirds filled the air. 
At first it seemed as though from this chorus 
single notes could not be detached, but soon the 
rattle of a kingfisher sounded from on high. 
Looking up I saw three of these birds flying- 
over towards Waltham and the Charles. They 
were at a great height for them, and I could not 



WOOD BUCKS AND BLOODROOT. 125 

recall ever before having seen more than two 
flying together. Before they were out of sight a 
sparrow hawk glided over, and presently a flock 
of ten or fifteen cedar birds shot past through the 
trees as though bound for the Mississippi. The 
oaks seemed to be a good point of observation 
even if the interesting strangers did not alight. 
A rushing and rustling of wings, and a queer 
quacking call marked the swift passage of a 
duck. Instead of going by, this visitor dropped 
into the reedy pool in front of me. I could see 
a part of the pond, the rest was screened by 
button -ball bushes. Long minutes passed. 
Should I move, creep up to the pond, or around 
the kame to its further slope ? Something moved 
on the water beyond the bushes. A dark form 
— two dark forms — were winding in and out 
among the stems and coming towards me. 

I raised my glass to my eyes and kept it there 
without a motion during what followed. Two 
ducks, one following the other, were coming 
slowly through the bushes which grew in the 
water at the end of the pond. From the 
bushes a thread of water wound in and out 
among the grass tussocks and passed under the 
wall within twenty short paces of me. The ducks 
entered this little brook ; the sunlight fell directly 
upon them. They were wood ducks, the most 
gorgeous of our waterfowl. Every feather shone 



126 LAND OF THE LINGERING SNOW. 

in the strong light. As they came on down 
the stream towards me they saw me ; their bright 
eyes were fixed upon me. If I moved ever so 
little they would be off. I felt frozen, hypno- 
tized, by their steady stare. The female was 
handsome enough, but the drake was equal to a 
Hindu maharajah in his splendor. His breast 
was chestnut, his head lustrous green and violet, 
his throat white, his back coppery black and 
brown with purple and green lights playing over 
it, his glittering eye was red. All these colors, 
gleaming in the sunlight at once, without so much 
as a spear of grass to hide them, were dazzling. 
The birds did not seem real. I longed to call 
some one to see them, to enjoy them with me. 
They slid noiselessly through their narrow chan- 
nel to the wall, and there the bushes hid them. 
Two or three minutes passed ; there was no sign, 
no sound. I rose and scanned the meadow for 
them, but they had vanished ; and during the 
remainder of my hour they did not reappear. 
Twice afterwards on other days I saw them, but 
under no such favoring circumstances. 

From the Oaks I walked most of the way back 
to Cambridge, seeing and hearing great numbers 
of birds. Bluebirds were conspicuously com- 
mon ; several more kingfishers flew over ; flickers 
were so numerous that I felt sure they must be 
migrating in force. Near Payson Park another 



WOOD DUCKS AND BLOODROOT. 127 

sparrow hawk sailed by me. There are known to 
be four pairs of these beautiful birds breeding 
within a few miles of Cambridge this spring. 
If the men hired by the Boston taxidermists to 
slaughter birds to keep them supplied with at- 
tractive material for " the trade " do not kill 
these exquisite little falcons, the species may 
soon become comparatively common in eastern 
Massachusetts. It is one of the most useful 
and friendly to man of our songless birds. 

Not far from Pay son Park in Belmont, and to 
the northwest of Fresh Pond, is what is sometimes 
called Summer House Hill. I reached this little 
eminence, which is one hundred and twenty feet 
above tide water, at about nine o'clock, and gained 
from it one of those pleasing half far-away, half 
near-by views which only small hills can give. 
The near-by was a mingling of orchards alive 
with birds and carpeted with new grass al- 
ready several inches long; the Concord turn- 
pike and the brickyards and marshes beyond it ; 
Fresh Pond with its graceful curving shore, 
drives, groves, and odd old ice-houses ; Mt. 
Auburn, the sky-roofed Westminster of New 
England ; Payson Park with its grand old trees 
and broad lawns ; and Belmont, the picturesque 
town of terraces and hillside villas. The far-away 
was Arlington and its wooded heights ; Winches- 
ter with its church spires ; Medford and the Fells 



128 LAND OF THE LINGERING SNOW. 

flanking the great Boston basin on its north ; 
and the basin itself crowded with the tangled 
streets and bristling chimneys of half a dozen 
sister cities. The view on that morning was 
interesting for a special reason ; it presented a 
sudden change in the coloring of the whole face 
of the land. A few days earlier, grays, browns, 
and delicate yellows had prevailed. These were 
forgotten, swept away by a flood of green and 
crimson. The green of the meadows, roadsides, 
and upland hayfields was so vivid that all under- 
lying tints were obliterated. The willows, 
which for weeks had been the most conspicuous 
color-spots in every view, had developed leaves 
strong enough in color to cancel the golden and 
coppery tones of their stems and merge them 
in the greens of grassland and meadow. The 
maples from gray and mist-like softness had with 
their red blossoms come forward as the most pro- 
nounced color-masses in the landscape. -Around 
Fresh Pond and in the maple swamps of the 
Alewife Brook marshes this gorgeous crimson 
coloring made the maples as conspicuous as in 
autumn. The first few days in April the greater 
part of Massachusetts was white with snow. 
Such coloring as this, coming as a quick contrast 
to winter tints, appeals most earnestly to the eye, 
and leaves a deep impression on the memory. 
It is one of the potent elements of spring, and 



WOOD BUCKS AND BLOODROOT. 129 

serves to attract and impress minds which might, 
without it, being blind to the subtler beauties 
and wonders of the transformation, miss alto- 
gether the glory of Nature's maidenhood. 



A VOYAGE TO HEARDS ISLAND. 

The Old Manse was sound asleep. The ring- 
ing of bells in Concord town, the rippling laugh- 
ter of a purple finch in the apple-tree, the sharp 
" chebec " of a least flycatcher by the barn, even 
the noise we made in taking our canoes and 
small traps off the express wagon, and carrying 
them down through the orchard to the river, 
failed to wake the old house from its slumbers. 
Song sparrows sang in the vista of lilacs at the 
western door, robins ran back and forth on the 
lawn like mechanical toys on a nursery floor, 
and redwing blackbirds and their naughty, im- 
provident cousins the cow buntings creaked, 
squeaked, and whistled on the willows by the 
Minute-Man. He, at least, was awake. His eager, 
resolute face was watching down that eastern path- 
way for the coming of new perils or new bless- 
ings to the children of Freedom. We left the 
Manse to its slumbers and the statue to its eter- 
nal vigil, and pushed our frail canoes out upon the 
glittering surface of the stream. It was five 
o'clock in the afternoon of Friday, April 24th. 



A VOYAGE TO HEARD'S ISLAND. 131 

A gentle west wind swung the catkins on the 
poplars, rippled the soft, short grass on the lawn, 
caressed the new leaves of the horse-chestnuts, 
maples, and willows, which were timidly unfold- 
ing under the unusually encouraging season. The 
Musketaquid had fallen more than a foot since 
our last cruise, and it was still falling fast. A 
greater change had, however, crept over the land 
and the air. The land was now a garden full 
of beauty. There was the beauty of miles of 
velvety grass and sprouting grain ; there was the 
beauty of shrubs thickly clad in half-unfolded 
leaves ; and there was the beauty of tall trees, 
whose foliage seemed to be growing as the 
eye rested upon it, and whose outlines of 
limb and trunk were being disguised by gauzy 
draperies of green, sure to become denser and 
fuller day by day as the eager sun looked more 
ardently upon the earth. There was also the 
beauty of spring blossoms, the red of the maples, 
the white of the willows ; the yellow of dande- 
lions, early buttercups, and potentilla ; the white 
of saxifrage, everlasting, houstonia, and anemone. 
The change in the air was twofold. On our 
other voyage it had brought the chill of snow 
from the central parts of the state ; now it 
brought the comforting warmth of a summer- 
like day. Before, the song of a bird or of a flock 
of birds had been an item by itself ; now, the air 



132 LAND OF THE LINGERING SNOW. 

was as full of musical undulations as it was of 
heat waves and light waves. An effort was re- 
quired, not so much to hear a particular song, as 
to separate it from the sound ripples which broke 
unceasingly upon the ear. In the midst of the 
splendor of the sunset colors, gold and red upon 
the sky, gold and red upon the river, we urged 
our dainty craft against the current, bound for 
Fairhaven Bay. 

My canoe was a Rob Roy, my friend's a 
longer, more slender one, without a deck. As 
we paddled, we faced forward, and each regu- 
lated his course by a lever, which he pressed 
with his feet, and which was connected with the 
rudder by chains running under the gunwales of 
the canoe. Thanks to this device, which is my 
friend's, we were enabled to use light, single- 
bladed paddles and to give little thought to the 
method of our strokes. 

It is pleasant to look forward rather than 
backward as one travels on a river. There is 
more of hope in it, and consequently more of 
joy. In rowing, one sees only departing, waning 
beauty ; in paddling, the whole world is before, 
with its good and evil inviting choice, its prom- 
ises of wonders beyond distant shores, its ever 
enlarging beauties, its swiftly realized dreams. 

As our paddles rose and fell, scattering bright 
globules of water on the river, which at first 



A VOYAGE TO HEARD'S ISLAND. 133 

refused to receive tliem back into itself, we left 
Concord behind us on the one side, and on the 
other many a meadow and sloping hillside, 
crowned with farmhouse or summer cottasfe. 
The town did not let us abandon it suddenly. 
More than once, when I thought it left far away 
across a meadow, the river would sweep back 
to it, and show us more green lawns and terraces, 
gay boats lying on the grass, elms fruited with 
purjjle grackles and cowbirds, children at their 
games, purple martins soaring near their bird 
boxes, and wagons roiliug up dust in the roads. 
Before we were free from the town our river 
changed its name ; for at a place where a ledge 
crowned with great trees is washed by the cur- 
rent, the north branch blends its waters with 
the Sudbury to form the Concord. The Sud- 
bury was our stream, and but for one brief 
glance up the dark Assabet I should not have 
known that Musketaquid had lost a part of 
its strength. 

About seven o'clock our cockleshells came to 
a long reach of river looking a little east of 
south. Meadow-grasses rustled over many acres 
on each side of us, and the breeze favored us at 
last. So we raised our tiny masts and spread 
our white sails. That which followed was to 
physical action what falling asleep is to mental 
effort. It was not rude motion gained by 



134 LAND OF THE LINGERING SNOW. 

thumping oars against resisting water. It was 
more like becoming a part of the air and glid- 
ing on in its embrace, silently, swiftly, without 
friction. Side by side our boats slipped on past 
whispering grasses, over the black water, under 
the violet sky in which the high stars were now 
appearing. Behind us the dark water was 
broken into ripples. They held quivering, 
bending bits of color, deep red, orange, yellow, 
and silver, scattered over the inky blackness of 
the stream. In front of us was a hill. It 
seemed very high in the gathering gloom. 
Nearer and on our right was a grove of lofty 
white pines. There are few such trees in this 
part of New England ; they are a fragment of 
the primeval woods, full of wind voices and 
memories of a lost race of men, and a vanishing 
race of birds and mammals. As we neared this 
grove a mysterious greeting came to us from its 
depths. A voice at once sad, deep, soft, and 
full of suppressed power seemed to question us. 
My friend responded in the stranger's language, 
and a few moments after a dark form floated 
over us, its great wings making no sound as 
they beat against the night air. Then from the 
foot of Fairhaven Hill the voice called to us 
again ; and soon the form passed back over the 
river to the tops of the pines. Behind Fairhaven 
Hill the eastern clouds reflected a slowly increas- 



A VOYAGE TO HEARD'S ISLAND. 135 

ing flood of yellow light. Over the rest of the 
sky night had settled. Bird voices were hushed, 
but from the river banks, as far as the ear could 
hear, the song of frogs rose and fell in irregular 
rhythm. The air was chilly, and a thin layer of 
white mist hurried over the surface of the water. 
Southward, up the river between Fairhaven Hill 
and the pine woods, the water gleamed with 
silvery whiteness, reflecting the sky. Its sur- 
face narrowed in the distance between looming, 
wooded headlands, and was finally swallowed up 
in the shadow of great trees whose tops made a 
serrated border to the brightening sky. At last 
the moon's rim showed through the trees on 
Fairhaven Hill, and the high pines close by us 
on the western shore were bathed in uncertain 
light. From their tops the mysterious voice 
still questioned us at intervals. 

This pine grove was our chosen camping 
ground, and the light of the moon enabled us to 
select a landing place and to draw our canoes 
ashore. Soon the two boats were resting upon 
hollows in the pine needles, ready to serve as 
our cocoons when we felt the need of sleep ; a 
bright fire was blazing near the edge of the 
water at a point where it offered no menace to 
the safety of the grove, and we were resting our 
weary muscles and busying our several senses 
with the moon, cold chicken and marmalade. 



136 LAND OF THE LINGERING SNOW. 

the warmth of the fire, the aroma of the pines, 
and the low, shivery remarks of the ghostly owner 
of the grove. Instead of being alarmed by our 
landing, the light of our fire, and the sound of 
our voices, the dark phantom of the pines seemed 
to be attracted by these unusual interruptions. 
The voice grew louder and more distinct. Its 
winged source came nearer from tree top to tree 
top, until it settled in the tallest, darkest pine 
in the grove, almost immediately over our 
heads. It was unlike any other voice I had ever 
heard. It possessed a contralto quality ; it was 
laden with intense emotion, yet it was calm and 
singularly regular both in its sounds and in its 
silences. In spite of its softness and the slight 
trembling in its tones, it suggested power, — a 
power sufficient to raise a trumpet note audible 
a mile away. 

Ten o'clock came and went, and we sought our 
cocoons. Over the opening in my Rob Roy a 
rubber blanket was arranged to button tightly, 
leaving space only for my face. Over the entire 
canoe, supported by a cord run from a short mast 
aft to the short mast near the bows, was drawn 
a waterproof tent having two little netting- 
covered windows in its gable ends. Wrapped in 
my wool blanket, tightly buttoned under the 
rubber blanket, I sighed, thought how sleepy I 
was, how well the canoe sustained my weary 



A VOYAGE TO HE AMD'S ISLAND. 137 

limbs, how comfortable I was to be, and — in fact, 
I was on the eve of sweet slumber when, " Whoo, 
hoo-hoo-hoo, whooo, whooo ! " came from the tree 
just over me. The voice restored me to con- 
sciousness. I seemed to see through my tent 
and the darkness of the pine foliage to the 
top of the tree, where in the moonlight sat a 
great bird with staring yellow eyes and feathery 
horns, looking now at the moon on her voyage 
from Fairhaven westward, and then at our smoul- 
dering fire, or at me, supine in my mummy case. 
" Whoo, hoo-hoo-hoo, whooo, whooo ! " came 
again, and its melancholy vibrations set my nerves 
to its rhythm, so that after it ceased it seemed 
to continue to echo in my mind's ear. Wide 
awake, I found myself measuring the time until 
it should come again. " Whoo, hoo-hoo-hoo, 
whooo, whooo ! " The thrill which the last two 
prolonged sighing notes sent through me was 
wonderful. They seemed to penetrate every 
fibre of my brain and quiver there as heated air 
quivers before the eye at midsummer midday. 
I thought of the theory that birds' notes are but 
imitations of sounds which they hear most fre- 
quently, and this song of the great horned owl 
above me seemed akin to the moaning of night 
winds in the hollows of dead trees. 

After a sleepless hour or more had passed, I 
sat up and peered out of the little window at the 



138 LAND OF THE LINGERING SNOW. 

head of my coffin. There were the great pine 
trunks rising like roughly carved columns to 
support the dark roof above. The moon's rays 
came between them and fell full in my face. I 
could see up the river, whose ripples were full of 
bits of moonlight and black shadows, over which 
hurried shreds of mist. Quiet as was the night, 
nothing seemed asleep. Nature, shamming re- 
pose, was moving silently about on mysterious 
errands of which slumbering man was not to 
know. The moon sailed on with her convoy of 
stars westward, the clouds sailed eastward. The 
river flowed northward, the mists were moving 
southward. Thousands of frogs mingled their 
songs on the river banks. The woods were full 
of slight rustlings of leaves, creakings or snap- 
pings of twigs, squeaks which seemed vocal, and 
an undercurrent of sound which was like the 
hushed breathing of the earth. Then, as though 
guiding all, came the weird voice of the owl in 
its strange rhythm and iis stranger intonation. 

Midnight passed and went on its long way, 
but still I did not sleep. Each time the owl 
spoke I was listening for it. Then a drumming 
partridge and the frogs gained a share of my 
hearing and thinking. The latter were leopard 
frogs, and their chorus was pitched on a low 
key. One of my friends compares their music 
to an army snoring in unison ; another to a 



A VOYAGE TO HEARD'S ISLAND. 139 

giant gritting his teeth. I could make my ears 
assent to either comparison. Suddenly my vi- 
brating nerves told me that the song of the 
owl had changed. I listened, excited. " Whoo, 
hoo-hoo-hoo, whooo, whooo ! " No, it was the 
same. But hark ! from another tree comes back 
a response, " Whoo, hoo-hoo-hoo, hoo-hoo-hoo, 
whoo5 ! " The male had returned from a hunt- 
ing trip, and the pair were talking it over. 

Whether it was the change and alternation in 
the owl's metre, or simple exhaustion on my part, 
which at last gave me sleep I cannot say, but 
after hearing a distant deep-toned bell strike 
twice I lost myself in needed slumber. 

My awakening was sudden. I found mj^self 
leaning on my elbow listening to one of the most 
joyous songs which New England birds produce. 
" Cherokee, cherokee, bo-peep, bo-peep, chrit, 
chrit, chrit, perucru, perucru, cru, cru, cru, cru ! " 

Pushing aside tent and mummy cloths I un- 
snarled myself and gained my feet. The moon 
was nearing her western harbor, but upon the 
rim of Fairhaven Hill rested the morning star. 
There are few moments in life so full of happi- 
ness and exultation as those in which man, 
brushing sleep from his eyes, rises with the first 
bird song and welcomes into his soul the beauty 
of the dawn. Some minutes in a life seem 
doubly charged with the essence both of seK- 



140 LAND OF THE LINGERING SNOW. 

consciousness and of perception. That moment 
of awakening was one of them to me. In this 
workl or the next I shall ever be able to recall 
the clarion of that brown thrush, the pure 
beauty of that star, and the contour of hill and 
forest, river and tented boats. I aroused my 
friend, and we sought a high, open pasture be- 
hind the pines, where we noted the order in 
which bird songs or calls reached us. The song- 
sparrow, the whip-poor-will, the robin, the crow, 
the chickadee, the ruby-crowned kinglet, the field 
sparrow, came in quick succession, the last reach- 
ing us at twenty minutes past four. The partridge 
had drummed all night. If the owls had been 
silent at all it was for little more than an hour. 

Not long after the sun swung clear of Fair- 
haven Hill our voyage upstream was resumed. 
The wind came from a bank of cold gray clouds, 
which rose rapidly from the north and soon ob- 
scured sun, moon, and pale blue sky. A spring 
flowing from a rugged ledge filled our jug with 
ice-cold water. On the ledge, columbine was in 
full bloom, a fact not often recorded for the 25th 
of April. Beyond, lay Fairhaven Bay, a beauti- 
ful widening of the river framed in wooded hills. 
Upon the crest of one of these hills stood three 
pines, and into the middle one a hawk descended 
upon its nest. Beyond the bay came a belt of 
meadow shore where the wind had a wide sweep. 



A VOYAGE TO HEARD'S ISLAND. 141 

Here we came upon a wounded sheldrake, whose 
quick and clever diving and desperate beatings 
along the tops of the waves enabled him to es- 
cape us. In the river's wandering across this 
meadow it led us close to a charming home spot. 
A high hill, broken on the river side into many 
gray ledges, overhung a narrow, bright green 
field. This was the home acre. A house sur^ 
rounded by shrubbery, a barn blessed with 
calves, hens, broods of young chickens, a kitchen 
garden newly planted, an orchard with swelling 
flower buds, a bridge with many piers and a 
bright red boat moored near it, — all these things 
lay cosily under the ledges. Swallows flew 
merrily back and forth between meadow and 
barnyard, and a bluebird sang sweet music in an 
apple-tree. We paused under the bridge and 
took account of the weather. The wind was 
rough and came in gusts ; the sky was now com- 
pletely overcast, and in the north ugly clouds 
seemed pressing forward up the river. Oilskin 
coats and rubber covers for the tops of the ca- 
noes were brought into play, and then away we 
sped under reefed sails across the next mile of 
river. Rain, hail, and snow all pelted us, and 
helped the wind lash the river into foam. 

An hour before noon we landed at a hillside 
covered with pines and cedars, and sought shel- 
ter in the woods for dinner and a fire. The hill 



142 LAND OF THE LINGERING SNOW. 

sloped towards the south and commanded a view 
of a wide bend in the river, and beyond it the 
beginning of the great Sudbury meadows, now 
under water and more like a shallow lake than a 
stream. Kept dry by the pines and in a glow by 
a fire of dry twigs and pine needles, we watched 
the strange mingling of seasons before us. An 
angry sky blotched with luminous white and 
leaden gray ; a river flowing against the storm, 
covered with white caps, foam, and the paths of 
sudden '^ flaws ; " beyond, flat grass land and a 
birch wood forming a background for the sway- 
ing columns of snowflakes, which were whirled up 
the stream, across the drenched fields and out of 
bight over the meadows, — such was the wintry 
side of the picture. Nearer, was a grassy slope 
of the tenderest green flecked witli everlasting, 
saxifrage, anemones, small purple violets of at 
least two kinds, white violets, innocents, as I love 
to call houstonia, early buttercups, potentilla, and 
dandelions. In the pines or within earshot were 
robins, hermit thrushes, pine warblers, a parula 
warbler, chipping sparrows, song sparrows, and 
field sparrows. Such was the spring-like side of 
the picture. Squall after squall passed, but the 
warblers sang on, and the swallows skimmed the 
river and seemed as gay among snowflakes as 
among sunbeams. 

As the water on the Sudbury meadows was so 



A VOYAGE TO HEARD'S ISLAND. 143 

shallow that more was to be feared from ground- 
ing than from tipping over, we hoisted sail and 
let the storm winds do their wildest with us. 
The canoes careened, the sheets tugged until our 
hands ached holding them, and off we flew like 
parts of the driving scud, up the long miles of 
meadow. Here and there bushes, or tussocks 
of swamp grass, reared their heads above the 
water and warned us from the shallows, but in 
the main the course was clear, and we passed 
over it as swiftly as the storm itself. 

About three o'clock the sun came out, and we 
found ourselves near Wayland village. Shel- 
tered from the wind by a railway embank- 
ment, we clung to the edge of a half-submerged 
meadow, to watch the flight of swallows after 
the storm. Perhaps we saw a thousand swal- 
lows that day, or perhaps my friend's usually 
conservative mind was too excited to estimate 
fairly. There were enough at all events to 
cover every rod of meadow with the poetry of 
geometry, drawn again and again in living lines 
of lustrous blue and black, warm chestnut, and 
gleaming white. The white-bellied swallows out- 
numbered all others ten to one, but in the maze 
could be seen barn swallows, bank swallows, 
eaves swallows, and now and then a purple mar- 
tin or a chimney swift. Away to the west was 
Nobscot Hill. Eastward, not more than a mile 



144 LAND OF THE LINGERING SNOW. 

distant, was Wayland village, and just ahead 
was the sunny slope of Heard's Island, our ulti- 
ma TJiide. Nothing short of another snow-squall 
could have made us leave the dancing swallows, 
but the squall came, and we sought Heard's Is- 
land and friendly firesides. 

After resting a bit we put on all the warm 
clothes we could muster, and took a brisk walk 
to Heard's pond, which bounds the island on the 
southwest, and to the Wayland elm, the noblest 
tree in Massachusetts. The cold appealed to us 
as strongly as though February had come again, 
and we feared that the birds, buds, and flowers 
would suffer during the night. Heard's pond 
is a charming sheet of water, soon doubtless to 
become the centre of a circle of cheery summer 
cottages. As for the Wayland elm, it is a won- 
derful triumph of nature. As we paced under 
it from north to south, its ancient branches 
seemed to extend over one hundred and twenty- 
five feet from one side of its lawn to the other. 
Two very large elms which stand near it are 
dwarfed by its royal size. Its symmetry, the per- 
fect condition of its many branches and myriad 
twigs, the healthy state of its unscarred bark, 
and the simple dignity of its position, all make it 
an ideal tree, — one which a savage might adore 
as the abiding place of a spirit. That night the 
canoes slept alone on the edge of the cold mead- 



A VOYAGE TO HEARD'S ISLAND. 145 

ow, and my slumbers were presided over, not by 
great horned owls, bnt by time-honored pictures 
of Dante, Petrarch, Tasso, Louis Agassiz, and 
Benjamin Peirce, and of Rome, Tivoli, Venice, 
Florence, and fair Harvard. 

Sunday dawned cool, clear and windy. There 
had been no frost. Nature had been true to 
herself, as she generally is. From nine till six 
we fought our way homewards against impetuous 
winds. No sail could aid us, no current do more 
than mitigate the force of the air. The battle 
against the waves developed a marked difference 
in our canoes. The moment we rounded a curve 
into a stretch of wind-swept water my canoe 
shot ahead of the other without extra effort on 
my part. In still water, and especially towards 
evening, when the wind died out, my friend was 
the one who played with his paddle, and I the 
one who toiled. At two o'clock we landed at 
the foot of a bold ledge rising abruptly sixty or 
seventy feet from the stream. We climbed part 
way to the summit and lunched, surrounded by 
columbine, violets, saxifrage and dozens of birds. 
A pewee complained of us, and turning we saw 
her nest on the face of the ledge, hidden under a 
projecting shoulder of rock. It was just com- 
pleted, and its delicate moss trimming made it 
seem part of the lichen-grown ledge itself. From 
the pines came the thin voice of a black-throated 



146 LAND OF THE LINGERING SNOW. 

green warbler saying, "one, two, three-a, four," 
and not far away the strong, brave phrases of 
the solitary vireo were audible. A real treat 
was the song of the ruby-crowned kinglet. It 
reminds me of a favorite mountain cascade of 
mine deep in hemlock woods, which has spar- 
kling jets, quick twists in its descending current, 
unbroken rushes over polished rock, and then 
three or four plunges, ending in a dark pool 
where trout linger under the foam. As we 
looked over the water a pair of wood ducks flew 
by, and at another time a small flock of black 
ducks. A kingfisher passed and repassed, sound- 
ing his harsh rattle, and a great blue-gray and 
white marsh hawk sailed down stream along the 
me: dow. 

We camped that night eighteen miles from 
Heard's Island and three miles below the Min- 
ute-Man. Ball's Hill rose above us, and Great 
Meadow, now half above water, extended before 
us like a wide lagoon. The curving shore was 
thickly strewn with pieces of dry wood of curi- 
ous shapes. When my friend stated that there 
was a wooden pail factory on the Assabet I un- 
derstood the origin of our fuel supply. During 
the last mile of the voyage, and while we were eat- 
ing our supper, we heard a bittern " pumping " 
on the meadow. At sunrise next morning two 
could be heard from the top of the hill, one 



A VOYAGE TO HEARD'S ISLAND. 147 

up stream and another down towards Carlisle 
bridge. The syllables " pung-chuck " repeated 
three or four times give an idea of this sound 
when it is made at a distance. After dark, as 
we lingered by our fire, we heard the " quauk " 
of a night heron flying down stream. I slept as 
well that night in my narrow mummy case as I 
should have on my broad spring bed at home. 

To see a sunrise from the top of Ball's Hill on 
a warm still day in April is worth an eighteen- 
mile paddle. There were bitterns pumping, 
crows cawing, mourning doves cooing, grouse 
and woodpeckers drumming, blackbirds creaking, 
kingfishers rattling, and a throng of thrushes, 
warblers, and finches singing in that early mass 
at St. Ann's. The sun came up behind Bedford 
towers, cast golden rays upon Great Meadow 
and passed into gray clouds. Although we ex- 
pected rain we spent half the forenoon coasting 
along Carlisle shore and wandering through the 
pine woods. I found a snug little screech owl 
in a hole in an apple-tree and tried to induce 
him to come out. No pounding on the tree nor 
gentle poking of him produced any effect. He 
was as placid as though made of the dead leaves 
and decayed wood which his coloring most sug- 
gested. A towhee bunting and his mate were 
scratching in the dry leaves by the river side. 
They, like the fox sparrows, seem to work both 
feet at once in scratching. It was a proud sight 



148 LAND OF THE LINGERING SNOW. 

"when a high-flying osprey plunged downward 
through many a foot of air to the river, and scat- 
tered myriad drops as he struck the water in a 
vain effort to grasp a wary fish. A pair of red- 
shouldered hawks screamed angrily at us as we 
paddled past their chosen gi'ove. A bittern flew 
up stream and settled in a snarl of rushes. We 
marked the spot and my friend paddled to it. 
The bird allowed the bow of the canoe to come 
within six or seven feet of him before his confi- 
dence in his protective coloring failed sufficiently 
to make him fly. A spotted sandpiper flew from 
shore to shore ahead of us, giving his character- 
istic whistle as he sped low over the water. 
When he remained for a moment on the shore 
his " teetering " seemed to make his outlines 
blend in the river ripples. The water thrush, 
a warbler next of kin to the ovenbird, has the 
teetering habit to a less marked degree, and is 
also a bird whose life is passed near the edge of 
waves. 

Not long after midday we sighted the Minute- 
Man, passed under his wooden bridge and 
grounded our boats on the Old Manse shore. A 
happy voyage was over. We had met fifty -seven 
kinds of birds and seen eighteen or more kinds 
of flowers in bloom. We had killed nothing, 
not even time, for those sixty-seven hours will 
live as long as our memory of pleasant things 
serves us* 



A FOREST ANTHEM. 

The 80th of April was a hot day. I left 
Boston at 12.30 p. m., in a car marked for the 
White Mountains via Conway Junction. The 
country was beautifully green, and some early 
fruit trees were white with flowers. In the brook 
meadows the marsh marigolds were gleaming 
like gold coin, and now and then we passed a 
pasture whitened b}^ houstonia. As we rolled 
over the Ipswich and Rowley marshes the dunes 
showed their ragged ranges against the eastern 
sky, and the sunlight brought out the beauty 
of their coloring. I was struck by the indiffer- 
ence to the cars of many of the wild creatures 
we passed. A woodchuck trundled his fat body 
slowly over a sandy field and scarcely looked at 
the train. Crows often walked up and down a 
stubble field within fifty feet of the track and 
merely kept one eye on the rushing, dust-raising 
cars. Near Kittery an eagle drew nearer and 
nearer to the train as though interested by it. 
On the other hand, sheep and dozens of awk- 
ward spring lambs fled from us, and horses kicked 
up their heels and galloped away in their pas- 



150 LAND OF THE LINGERING SNOW. 

tures, or shied in harness, to the terror of nervous 
women. After passing Wolfborough Junction 
I watched for traces of winter, but Wakefield 
and Ossipee were as green as Concord and Cam- 
bridge. Marigolds shone by the brooks, arbu- 
tus smiled from the shady banks along the cut- 
tings, maples glowed red in the descending rays 
of the sun. The leaves on birches and poplars 
were well out and brilliant in color. Swallows 
were skimming over Bearcamp water, and smoke 
hung over the mountains so that even Cho- 
corua's peak was not in view until I reached 
West Ossipee and left the train. 

Half of the country between the Ossipee Moun- 
tains and Chocorua is a sandy level covered 
with pitch-pines and scrub-oaks. It is a fine 
place for blueberries, fires, and pine warblers iu 
summer, for crows, golden rod, and asters in 
autumn, and for snowdrifts in winter. Now 
and then one gets a glimpse of a deer among 
the scrub, and in winter fox tracks are always 
thick upon the snow which lies heavy upon 
these plains. As the sun sank low in the west 
the air became chilly and the snow wrinkles on 
Chocorua's brow seemed more real. Towards 
the east a tower of smoke rose into the sky, and 
at one point I caught a glimpse of the flames 
not more than a mile away. By seven 1 was 
supping at a cosy fireside in Tamworth Iron 



A FOREST ANTHEM. 151 

Works village, listening to tales of winter hard- 
ships and spring sickness, for the grip had been 
making hearts weary even in these fastnesses of 
the north. Then under the light of the stars I 
walked on up the Chocorua River valley towards 
the lakes and the mountain, at whose feet my 
haven nestled. Lights gleamed and were lost 
in the valley behind me. Dull masses of fire- 
light shone upon the smoky sky in three places 
on the horizon. A torch flashed, went down, 
and flashed again, marking a spot where a fish- 
erman was watching, spear in hand, for suckers 
in a meadow brook. Then, as I reached the 
crest of the hill, I saw below me the white water 
of the lakes, and beyond, above, dimly present 
in the smoky heaven as conscience is present in 
the mind of man — Chocorua. 

The stars burned near it like altar candles. 
The smoke of fires rose around it like incense, 
the song of myriad frogs floated softly from the 
lakes below like the distant chanting of a choir, 
and the whispering of the wind in the pines 
was like the moving of many lips in prayer. 

Early the next morning I was out under the 
cloudless sky listening to the voices of May day. 
Sparrows were in the majority. Song, field, 
chipping, vesper, white-throats, and juncos were 
all there, the white-throats being the most 
numerous. White-bellied and barn swallows 



152 LAND OF THE LINGERING SNOW. 

circled around the cottage, and chimney-swifts 
dotted the sky with their short, sharp notes. 
Loons were making wild clamor on the lake, the 
phoebe note of the chickadee came like a cool 
breeze from the orchard, and up in the sugar- 
maple grove a pigeon woodpecker was calling 
" flick-flick-flick-flick-flick-flick " a great many 
times in succession. The air was superlatively 
pure, sparkling, full of that which makes deep 
breathing a pleasure. The great mountain 
peak stood out sharply against the northern sky, 
and the morning sunbeams came back dancing 
from its snowdrifts. Peace pervaded every- 
thing, yet a thrill of life was trembling in earth 
and air and water. Spring, real spring was 
present in that land, with no threat of east wind 
to chill it. In the woods, beside the roads, 
the arbutus grew in masses. Its leaves were 
flattened to earth, just as the snow had left 
them. To find the blossoms one had to run a 
finger down the stems and lift up the shy 
flowers to the light of day. Their perfume made 
the air precious. The straw-colored bells of the 
uvular m swung in the breeze. In the woods 
by the brookside the painted and the dark red 
trilliums hid their beauty, but in every grove, 
upon the sides of the mountains, and along the 
shores of the lakes, the blossoms of the maples 
glowed red in the sunlight. 



A FOREST ANTHEM, 153 

All through the day the white-throated spar- 
rows scratched m the leaves which the melting 
snows had left pressed to the surface of the 
ground. I estimated that I saw over a hundred 
of these busy birds. A few were singing, and 
their " pe-pe-pe-pe-peabody, peabody, peabody " 
went straight to the heart — just as it always 
does, whether in spring, summer or autumn. I 
caught one beautiful male who had flown through 
an open doorway and was beating himself 
against the window pane. Holding him gently 
but firmly in my closed hand, so that his won- 
derfully marked head alone was free to move, 
I stroked his black, white, and yellow feathers 
with the tip of my right forefinger. After 
repeated pressure of the gentlest kind on the 
back of his beautiful head and the nape of his 
neck, I slowly opened my hand and left him 
perched on my middle finger. He looked around 
him but did not offer to fly. Again and 
again I brought my hand up slowly to his head 
and caressed him. His clear, bright eyes 
watched me fearlessly. I moved him gently, 
but the little feet only clung the more closely to 
my finger. For nearl}'- five minutes he perched 
there contentedly, and then, recovering some 
suppressed faculty, he rejoined his friends 
among the dry leaves. 

About noon I visited a red maple which I 



154 LAND OF THE LINGERING SNOW. 

knew had been a favorite sap-drinking resort of 
the yellow-bellied woodpeckers and their attend- 
ant friends, the humming birds. The woodpeck- 
ers were at the tree, but unaccompanied as yet 
by hummers. There was evidence in the large 
number of new holes already cut in the bark of 
the tree that the woodpeckers had been back 
from the south since about April 20. They 
were busy excavating a new house in a sound 
poplar tree near their maple fountain, and that 
also showed a week or more of thought and labor 
expended. Black and white creeping warblers 
and Nashville warblers were abundant in the 
woods near by, and I suspected a downy wood- 
pecker of having selected a house-lot near the 
sapsuckers, from the close watch which he kept 
on me while I was in the neighborhood. Dur- 
ing the half hour which I spent watching the 
yellow-bellied woodpeckers drinking the flowing 
sap on the maple and digging diligently at their 
hole in the poplar, I heard an unbroken cawing 
of crows at a distance. At last the uproar was 
so great that I went to seek an explanation of it. 
Well hidden on the crest of a kame, I looked 
across a narrow ravine into the edo:e of a haupf- 
ing wood of old beeches and yellow birches. 
Sixteen crows were in these trees, gathered with- 
in a few yards of each other. They were all caw- 
ing at once, and shaking their heads, flapping 



A FOREST ANTHEM. 155 

tlieir wings and hopping back and forth from 
branch to branch. The centre of attraction 
seemed to be an idea, not carrion or an owl. I 
tested this by hooting like a barred owl. In- 
stantly sixteen pairs of wings brought sixteen 
excited birds across the ravine in search of hated 
Strix, but I lay low under a hemlock and the 
crows returned to their rendezvous and their 
clamorous debate. Several times during the 
afternoon faint echoes of their oratory reached 
me at my house half a mile away. 

At sunset I walked to the rustic bridge be- 
tween the lakes and let the wonderful beauty of 
the scene flow in and fill every corner of my be- 
ing. Against the northern sky rose Chocorua, 
Paugus, Passaconaway and Whiteface, four con- 
nected mountains, each beautiful, but all differ- 
ing one from another. Chocorua on the east, 
and due north of the lakes, sustains a horn of 
naked rock upon shoulders of converging wooded 
ridges. Paugus, heavily wooded, yet with many 
ledge faces and scars showing light among its 
hemlocks, is a mountain of curves and wrinkles, 
having no one definite summit, but many fire 
and wind swept domes. Passaconaway is an im- 
mense spruce-covered pyramid, pathless and for- 
bidding. Whiteface, at the west, is a shoulder 
of rock 4,000 feet high, draped in forest except 
where an avalanche has rent its covering and 



156 LAND OF THE LINGERING SNOW. 

left bare its substance. All of these peaks 
rested upon a sky of gold flecked with crimson. 
All of them were repeated in the placid lake, 
which also copied the glory of the sky and of 
the descending sun. To the east of the lake a 
forest of ancient pines extends from the shore 
part way up a ridge. Above the pines the 
ridge is covered with young birches, poplars 
and maples. The tender foliage of these trees, 
bathed in the last rays of the sun, formed a 
glowing veil of color. The most delicate greens 
showed where young leaves were unrolling on 
poplars and birches, soft reds covered the maples, 
and the silvery white perpendicular lines of the 
birch stems formed a thousand graceful columns 
for the support of the light masses of color which 
clung to them. That the sky behind this gay 
fresco of the spring was pure pale blue only 
added to its loveliness. Lake, mountains, woods, 
sky gave joy to the eye and peace to the heart. 
Watching them I said : " Had they but a voice, 
how eloquent it would be of praise, how full of 
courage and hope. The lake is pure and deep, 
the mountains strong and high, the woods hope- 
ful and kind, the sky infinite and full of mys- 
tery." Then there came from the midst of the 
dark pines nearest the shore a vojce, and it 
seemed to me that no other voice in all that wild 
JNTew Hampshire valley could have come so near 



A FOREST ANTHEM. 157 

expressing tlie praise, hope, and beauty of that 
spot as the song which floated softly out from 
the shadows. Those who from childhood have 
known the song of the hermit thrush, and had it 
woven into the very fibres of their hearts, will 
know how I was thrilled by the voice of that 
hermit thrush, singing on May-day evening at 
the foot of Chocorua, while snow still gleamed 
on the mountain summits. 

Strolling up the road south of the lakes I sud- 
denly heard the nasal call of a woodcock coming 
from a dry and sloping field facing the sunset. 
Soon lie rose, and the sound, like that of a sing- 
ing reed, came through the air. I looked up and 
presently saw the bird circling irregularly in 
the upper air, his wings beating rapidly. Jump- 
ing the wall I hurried to the spot from whicli he 
had risen. No sooner had I crouched among 
the bushes than the water-whistle notes came 
nearer and nearer, and then there was a great 
rushing of swift wings and the bird alit within 
a few paces of me. He immediately began mak- 
ing a soft and odd note as a substitute for his 
" 'n-yah ! " I had heard it described by the syl- 
lables " puttie," but as it reached me, it lacked 
the definiteness and disjunctive quality of those 
sounds. That the bird saw me I did not doubt 
for a moment. He faced me, and in the dim 
light I seemed to feel his close set eyes fixed 



158 LAND OF THE LINGERING SNOW. 

upon me. I could not see that he moved head 
or wings in making his inquiring note. After 
a shorter rest than usual he rose westward in a 
long diagonal over the bushes and began his cir- 
cling. The next time he came down he was a 
hundred feet distant, and began at once the 
nasal call. In all he made ten or eleven as- 
cents, and in coming down avoided me, although 
I changed my ground each time he rose and 
tried hard to get near him again. He finally 
moved to another field, where he was circling at 
half past seven, when I left the hill. 

Early next morning when I returned to the 
city my eyes were full of visions of beautiful 
mountain scenery, and my ears rang with the 
mocking laughter of loons and the sweet song 
of the hermit thrush. 



THE BITTERN'S LOVE SONG. 

On Saturday, May 9, spring had the sulks. 
In the afternoon a bitterly cold east wind de- 
pressed birds, discouraged flowers, turned the 
sky gray, and left the sun looking like a red 
wafer. So dim was it that at four o'clock I 
turned my opera glass on it and scanned it as 
though it were only the moon. If a May east 
wind has this chilling effect upon the sun, what 
wonder that its blast makes poor mortals miser- 
able ! 

The sun had a black spot on his face. It 
looked large enough to be Mercury or Venus 
taking a transit on the sly. 

I went by an afternoon train to Waverley and 
walked thence to Rock Meadow on Beaver Brook. 
Maps of recent date call this brook " Clematis 
Brook," a pretty name, no doubt, but one never 
approved by the General Court. It was at the 
foot of Rock Meadow that the beavers made their 
dam, lived, died, and passed into history. Surely 
the branch of the brook where the beavers lived 
should be called Beaver Brook, rather than the 
branch where beavers never lived and never could 



160 LAND OF THE LINGERING SNOW. 

have lived, owing to the lack of a good place for 
their dam. Moreover, the '' Clematis Brook " of 
the railway guide and the real estate office is the 
Beaver Brook sung of by a writer whose know- 
ledge of Cambridge and its surroundings has 
never been challenged. Here is his description 
of the old mill which once stood at the cascade 
just above the Waverley oaks : — 

Climbing' the loose-piled wall that hems 
The road along the mill pond's brink, 

From 'neath the arching barberry stems, 
My footstep scares the shy ehewink. 

Beneath the bony buttonwood 

The mill's red door lets forth the din ; 

The whitened miller, dust-imbued, 
Flits past the square of dark within. 

No mountain torrent's strength is here ; 

Sweet Beaver, child of forest still. 
Heaps its small pitcher to the ear 

And gently waits the miller's will. 

In a note written June 16, 1891, Mr. Lowell 
says : " You are right. The brook which was 
down by the great oaks was certainly called 
' Beaver ' when I first knew it more than fifty 
years ago. The scene of my poem was the little 
millpond, somewhat higher up towards the north, 
below which was a waterfall in whose company 
I often passed the day." 

The old mill and its miller have long since 



THE BITTERN'S LOVE SONG. IGl 

been swept away by the currents of Beaver 
Brook and of that greater stream called Life. 
The millstone lies below the dam, with moss, not 
flour, on its cheek. Clematis twines itself over 
the ruin and seeks even to twine its name over 
the name hallowed by time and song. 

The willows along Concord turnpike where 
that venerable causeway crosses Rock Meadow 
are wonderful places for birds. Even on this 
bleak, discouraged afternoon I saw over thirty 
species, including eight kinds of warblers. One 
of them was the black-throated blue warbler, 
dark, dignified and exclusive. Above he is 
slaty-blue ; below, white. His throat, chin and 
face are jet black. On each wing he carries a 
triangular white spot, which marks him as far 
as the eye can distinguish his dainty form. His 
wife dresses in green and is one of the " wonder 
birds" to young collectors, but she may be iden- 
tified by the white spot on her wing. Another 
warbler met for the first time this season was 
the chestnut-sided. His head is yellow on top, 
his back is dark, his under parts white. His eye 
is in a black patch, and running from it down 
his side is a chestnut streak, or series of streaks, 
often very distinct. I once found a nest of a 
chestnut-sided warbler, in which young birds 
were nearly ready to fly, placed in the crotch of 
a brake, and having no other su])port. The 



162 LAND OF THE LINGERING SNOW. 

brakes grew thickly over more than an acre of 
sparse woodland, and this nest bore the same 
relation to the miniature forest that an osprey's 
ponderous structure does to stunted woods by 
the seashore. 

Another bird which I was pleased to see was 
the kingbird. Three chilly individuals of this 
pugnacious species sat close together on a willow 
limb, now and then one of them flying up with 
a harsh chatter to catch an insect on the wine:. 
While watching these kingbirds I fancied that 
I heard the sound of a bittern " pumping." It 
was just six o'clock, and the sound seemed far 
away, but I scanned the meadow carefully 
through a gap in the willows. About a hun- 
dred yards from the road was a pile of weathered 
meadow hay, containing perhaps two or three 
pitchforks-full. On this stood a bittern. His 
coloring harmonized with it so well that at first 
I mistook him for a bundle of it poked up 
against a stake. I watched him for nearly ten 
minutes, part of the time from the road, later 
from behind a bunch of bushes fifty feet nearer 
to him. Four times during this period he made 
his singular call. His body seemed to be carried 
about at the angle of a turkey's. His neck was 
much curved. Suddenly the lower part of the 
curve was agitated in a way to suggest retch- 
ing, and a hint of the sound to come later be- 



THE BITTERN'S LOVE SONG. 163 

came faintly audible. Then the agitation, which 
became much more violent, affected the upper 
throat, neck and head, the head being thrown 
violently upward and the white upon the throat 
showing like a flash of light every time the spas- 
modic fling of the neck was repeated. The 
sound at that short distance was different in 
quality from the bittern's note carried to a dis- 
tance. I fancied that it suggested the choking 
and gurgling of a bottle from which liquid is be- 
ing poured, the bottle during the process being 
held inside an empty hogshead. In trying to 
approach the bird more closely I alarmed him, 
and he slunk off into the high meadow grass 
beyond the haycock. At a distance the sound 
seemed like two words, " pung chuck," but near 
by there seemed to be a third syllable ; and sev- 
eral minor sounds, inaudible at a distance, were 
made while the bird was getting up steam. It 
seemed to me at the time, knowing nothing of 
the nature of the process, that the bird produced 
the sound by a mechanical use of a column of 
air extending from its open mouth to its stom- 
ach. Perhaps whooping cough is perennial in 
the bittern family. 

In this meadow the marsh marigolds were 
abundant, but on seeking to gather a bunch I 
felt the first sorrow of the year. The flowers 
were faded, their golden petals were stained and 



164 LAND OF THE LINGERING SNOW. 

partly fallen, their beauty had departed. So 
soon! Spring, scarcely sure of its standing 
as a season, is marked with the first scars of 
death. Not far away I saw a dandelion gone to 
seed. Truly if the winter is tempered by many 
a suggestion of the renewal of life, the spring is 
branded with many a reminder of the coming of 
death. Life and death ; what are they but the 
swinging of a pendulum, — the one as sure to 
succeed the other as the other is certain to give 
place to the one. Each, while it lasts, contains 
an ever increasing germ of the other. Neither 
can be final so long as law exists. 



WARBLER SUNDAY. 

I FULLY intended to climb Nobscot Hill on 
Sunday, May 10th, but when I reached the 
Massachusetts Central Railway Station in North 
Cambridge, I found that there were no Sunday 
trains, my apparently straightforward time-table 
to the contrary notwithstanding. Blessing that 
railway, as I had frequently blessed it before, I 
hurried back to Porter's Station and took a 
train on the Fitchburg. Just where I was to 
leave that train I was uncertain. It was my hope 
that the conductor, or the brakeman, could tell 
me which station was nearest to Nobscot Hill. 
So I went to South Acton and changed to a 
train for Marlborough. Neither conductor nor 
brakeman had ever heard of Nobscot Hill, and 
said there were so many hills I could get out 
almost anywhere and find what I wanted. As 
no impressive hill coukl be seen from the car 
windows, I finally left the train at a place called 
Rockbottom. A merciless red sun beat down 
upon the little village. Scarcely a breath of air 
was stirring. The loiterers around the station 
were Irish mill operatives who knew nothing 



166 LAND OF THE LINGERING SNOW. 

and seemed to care nothing about the natural 
surroundings of their home. The only one who 
showed even kindly curiosity felt sure that 
Honeypot Hill was what I meant, and j^ointed 
out a shadeless gravel bubble just across the 
Assabet. Finding an old resident I learned 
that Nobscot Hill was six or seven miles away 
in Sudbury. Could I hire a horse ? No, it 
would be impossible to secure one. 

Left to the treeless fields of Rockbottom, the 
meadows of the listless Assabet and the allure- 
ments of Honeypot Hill, I felt something akin 
to despair gnawing at my temper. I could not 
even go home, for the next train did not start 
for the city until six p. M. The heat was worthy 
of July, but in spite of it I chose the railway 
embankment as a short cut across the Assabet 
and its meadows to the only piece of woods in 
sight. Dressed as warmly as on my January 
walks, for the wind had been east and the sky 
cold when I left Cambridge, I strolled down the 
half-mile of track, enjoying Nature as an Esqui- 
maux might enjoy the Sahara. The sun's light 
caught in the ripples of the Assabet, and each 
reflection seemed a flame. An oriole sang from 
the midst of a snowy pinnacle of pear blossoms, 
and his plumage seemed to burn in its midst. 
Two tiny redstarts chased each other in irregu- 
lar circles above the bushes, and as I glanced at 



WARBLER SUNDAY. 167 

them fire seemed devouring their expanded tails 
and wings. Down in the aklers by the river- 
side a blackbird called out, " Cong-ka-ree — 
for I see thee," and then he hovered over the 
marsh grass till red - hot spots appeared on 
his shoulders. Fortunately for eyes and brain 
the pine woods were gained at last, and I 
squirmed under a barbed wire fence and took 
refuge in their soothing shade. 

Lying there I reflected, and my conclusion 
was that it was a better day to keep quiet under 
the pines by Assabefc water than to climb the 
slopes of Nobscot Hill. The hot air trembled 
with the songs of birds, and wandering songsters 
passed under or over the pines, sometimes paus- 
ing in their branches. The noisy calls and only 
half -musical notes of the robin rang out again 
and again. A veery or Wilson's thrush com- 
plained of my intrusion. He reminded me that 
his cousins, the hermits, had gone north before 
this, and were even then singing their hymns 
in the cloisters of the hemlock forests. Over the 
river a brown thrush was pouring out his rol- 
licking song, and in a ditch by the railway track 
a catbird sat among briers and flung out alter- 
nating bits of music and spiteful complaint. 
One bluebird sat on the telegraph wire, and 
another on an apple-tree at the foot of Honeypot 
Hill. First one and then the other murmured 



168 LAND OF THE LINGERING SNOW. 

a comment or a word of love. If it was a com- 
ment it was full of happy content ; if a word of 
love it must have sounded very sweet to its mate. 
Back and forth over the Assabet and its meadx 
ows passed the white-bellied swallows. The 
sunlight found favor in the blue lustre of their 
backs, and as they rose and fell, turned left or 
turned right, the immaculate whiteness of their 
under plumage also responded, flashing to the 
touch of light. They are my favorites among 
the swallows. The martins are dark and 
strong, the bank swallows small and lacking in 
individuality ; the eaves swallows irregularly 
distributed and petulant, the barn swallows less 
graceful in flight and less perfect in form. As 
for the swifts they are not swallows, and if they 
were, they seem to be only animated forms of 
soot possessed of the power of flying through 
space with incredible speed, and of steering them- 
selves without tails. 

The bushes and grasses in and upon the 
banks of the Assabet were alive with red- 
wing blackbirds. The males, gay in plumage, 
noisy and restless, seemed to pervade the 
meadows. The females, smaller, sober in 
dress and more chary of speech, flitted back 
and forth in everlasting bustle. I saw no bobo- 
links. Occasionally the plaintive call of a 
meadow starling blended with the blackbird 



WARBLER SUNDAY. 169 

clamor, and at brief intervals the cheerful dis- 
cord of the Baltimore oriole joined the din. 
Within the grove there was a lesser circle of 
motion and noise. The harsh voice or the 
passing shadow of a crow made the warblers in 
that inner circle seem more like fractions of 
bird life than separate, animated beings. In all, 
I count upon seeing nineteen species of warblers 
during the migration. It is possible to see 
several more kinds, but I refer to my regular 
friends. The outrunners of the migrating 
horde are the pine warblers, yellow - rumps, 
yellow red-polls, black-and-white creepers, sum- 
mer yellow - birds, and black - throated green 
warblers. These are followed by the redstarts, 
black - throated blues, parulas, chestnut - sided 
warblers, blackburnians, bay - breasteds, Nash- 
villes, ovenbirds and accentors, and at varying 
times by the Maryland yellow-throats, Wilson's 
black-caps, Canadian flycatchers and black-polls, 
the last-named sounding the knell of the migra- 
tion with their irritating z-z-z-ing. This hot day 
by the Assabet was evidently just to the liking 
of the warblers. Their thin voices sounded in 
every direction. A female redstart pursued her 
mate round and round and round the grove, 
only stopping for a second's rest, in which her 
sharp little voice filled the chinks in her circle 
of perpetual motion. A succession of yellow- 



170 LAND OF THE LINGERING SNOW. 

rumped warblers passed through the trees catch- 
ing insects on the wing. They wore a gold spot 
on each breast, on their rumps, and on their 
crowns. Their white throats reminded me of 
the contour of a swallow's throat. The redstarts 
were thinking of housekeeping. The yellow- 
rumps were rangers, foraging on their line of 
march. In a few days the redstarts will have 
built the softest little cup in the crotch of a 
maple in that very grove ; the yellow-rumps will 
perhaps be north of the Basin of Minas. 

Along the edges of the meadow, in alders and 
other low thick growth, bits of pure gold 
shot hither and thither in the sunlight. They 
were summer yellow-birds. " Sweety, sweety, 
sweet, sweet, sweet," is a free translation of their 
song. They, too, were love-making, and will 
soon be treasuring little spotted eggs in dainty 
fleece- lined, cup-shaped nests, built in those iden- 
tical bushes. The Assabet will see their nests 
begun, but the leaves will grow large and keep 
the secret. Pine-creeping warblers and black- 
and-white creeping warblers are appropriately 
named. Both were abundant by the Assabet, 
and willing to be watched. They are inspectors 
of leaves and twigs, as the downy woodpeck- 
ers and little brown creepers are inspectors of 
trunks and limbs. All day long the trilling of 
the pine warblers sounded in the hot air. Seeing 



WARBLER SUNDAY. 171 

a handsome golden-olive male motionless on tlie 
lower limb of a pine, I crept close to him and lay 
on the fragrant needles watching him. For ten 
minutes neither he nor a chickadee in the next 
tree moved a feather. Then I whistled a gentle 
trill. The pine warbler stirred and listened. 
Then he tipped back his head, slightly opened 
his tiny beak and his throat trembled as the 
notes rolled evenly out. His notes roll : those 
of a chipping sparrow, which to the unpracticed 
ear are indistinguishable, are better indicated by 
a line of zigzags. 

About one o'clock I crossed the Assabet and 
climbed a hill overlooking it and Boon Pond 
which empties into it. A strong breeze came like 
a benediction to make my lunch refreshing. 
Beyond the pond and the nearer hills I saw 
Nobscot Hill as many miles to the southeast of 
me in Stow, as it had been west of me in Way- 
land. Southward on a ridge was Marlborough. 
Northward in a hollow was Maynard, with its 
factory chimneys. There seemed to be some 
comfortable farming land in Stow, and that 
nearest us, and adjoining Honeypot Hill, — 
which, by the way, looked very insignificant 
from my nameless hill, which I liked because no 
one had advised me to climb it — was well 
ploughed, harrowed, and sown, and flanked by 
orchards and nurseries. On this cool hill-top 



172 LAND OF THE LINGERING SNOW. 

white - throated sparrows were scratching in 
the leaves. There has been a great migration 
of these birds this year, or else the usual migra- 
tion has seemed greater, because the birds have 
tarried during a week of cool, dry weather 
when they might have travelled quickly under 
different circumstances. Several of the apple- 
trees on the south side of this hill were in bloom, 
and the hum of bees came from them. It 
IS a soothing sound, akin to the singing of a 
tea-kettle in some snug farmhouse kitchen. The 
orioles were in the orchard, but I watched in vain 
for humming birds. There were orioles in Cam- 
bridge on Saturday, but they were quiet ; this 
day is their first of demonstration in numbers. 
It is also the first day of open lilac blossoms. 

On the north shore of Boon Pond I found a 
large and beautiful grove of pines. A majority 
of the trees were pitch-pines, favorite resorts of 
birds at any season and in any weather. Lying 
on a bank deeply cushioned with pine needles I 
spent most of the afternoon fanned by a breeze 
which swept across the pond, listening to the 
music of the ripples, the warblers, and the field 
sparrows in the pasture beyond the grove, and 
gazing at the blue water, and the deep green of 
the foliage above me. In winter white-pines 
are very dark in color, while pitch-pines are 
golden-green. At this season, by mutual con- 



WARBLER SUNDAY. 173 

cessions, their coloring comes so nearly together 
that the eye finds difficulty in tracing their 
outlines. The pines were alive with warblers. 
Black - and - white creepers and pine warblers 
were most numerous, but black-throated greens, 
yellow-rumps, and yellow red-polls were almost 
always within sight or hearing. The trick of 
the yellow red-poll of wiggling his tail reminds 
me of the water thrush and the spotted sand- 
piper, but this bird certainly does not do it 
because he frequents the edges of waves or 
brooks. Between Boon Pond and the Assabet 
are some damp woods, a meadow and a line of 
willows. In the damp woods I found redstarts, 
black-throated blue warblers and an ovenbird. 
In the meadow a chewink was scratching among 
the grass and innocents, and in the willows sum- 
mer yellow-birds, yellow-rumps, chestnut-sided 
warblers and black-throated greens caught flies 
on the wing and frolicked with each other 
among the falling blossoms. The blossoms as 
they fell upon the pond looked like yellow cater- 
pillars in danger of drowning, but as the wind 
caught them they sailed away merrily to distant 
shores. They made a brave fleet standing east- 
ward with all sails set. The ovenbird differs 
greatly from most of the other warblers. In 
fact, his character and dress both proclaim him 
a thrush. His back is olive-green, but it is not 



174 LAND OF THE LINGERING SNOW. 

far removed from the upper coloring of the 
olive-backed thrush. Below he is white with 
dusky spots on his breast and sides ; and so is 
the olive-backed thrush. His eyes are large and 
earnest like a thrush's, and his nest is placed 
upon the ground like that of the hermit thrush. 
His dark orange crown set in black is his one 
family emblem which a thrush would repudiate. 
The ovenbird by the Assabet dropped to the 
ground when he saw me and stole away as 
slowly and silently as though he had been a 
bittern, expert in the art of gliding. 

At six o'clock, I stood on a low bridge over 
the Assabet at Whitman's Crossing. The air 
was full of swallows, the bushes and weeds were 
rich in blackbirds, snowy and rose-tinted blossoms 
decked the orchards, a fair pale sunset presided 
over the sky and looked at itself in the river. 
A snake with his head reared above the ripples 
swam swiftly across from one weedy shore to the 
other. The whistle of the train echoed a mile 
away, and its growing thunder was in my ears. 
Looking down the stream I could see a distant 
hill ; nearer were two wooded points, one on the 
east, one on the west ; nearer still a meadow full of 
rank grass, and at my feet a mirror of blue 
water. The coloring of that farewell glimpse of 
Assabet was exquisite. The hill, covered prob- 
ably with scrub oak, was rosy j)urple ; of the 



WARBLER SriVDAV. 175 

two wooded points, one was a mingling of the 
dark green of pines in shadow, the pale tender 
green of young beeches and birches, and the 
delicate reds of maples bearing their keys ; the 
other, densely grown with alders, was rich with 
olive-browns and greens. The meadow grass was 
bluish green in shadow, and golden green in 
the sunlight. The intensity of the coloring- 
seemed to be increased by looking at it with my 
head on one side. The effect of looking at any 
landscape in this way is to make it much like 
the image in a Claude Lorraine glass. 



ROCK MEADOW AT NIGHT. 

At a quarter past six on Monday, May 11, I 
caught a train at Porter's Station and went to 
Belmont. A brisk walk along the Concord 
turnpike, past blooming horse-chestnuts, and 
through air heavy with the perfume of lilacs, over 
Wellington Hill and down into Rock Meadow, 
brought me just at sunset to the willows and the 
home of the bittern. Turning into the marsh, I 
crossed it on an old cart track to a wooded island 
in its midst. I concealed myself among the 
small trees on the edge of the island and swept 
the meadow with my glass. Hundreds of frogs, 
piping hylas, redwing blackbirds, crows, cat- 
birds, and small birds mingled their voices in an 
indescribable vesper chorus. Nature was alone. 
Man's presence was unsuspected. I felt like an 
intruder, but remembered that I had no evil in- 
tent against anything in that great meadow. 
While still searching with my glass for the bit- 
tern I heard his call, and at once discovered him. 
He was a hundred yards from me in the grass. 
He was facing northwest, and I was nearly 



ROCK MEADOW AT NIGHT. 177 

due north of him. His head, neck and shoul- 
ders were plainly visible. I settled myself into 
a comfortable position and watched him closely 
through my glass. Except when pumping or 
preparing to pump he was perfectly motionless, 
his beak pointing well upward. I knew when 
he was about to begin his music by the slow 
lowering of his beak. This was followed by the 
agitation of his breast and the first sounds from 
his throat. Then came his spasm, his neck and 
head being thrown up and snapped forward so 
violently that it seemed that the head must suf- 
fer dislocation. With these contortions came 
the noises which are so difficult to explain or 
describe. In this instance it seemed as though 
water was being shaken violently in a skin bot- 
tle, liistening intently, the sounds seemed best 
expressed by the syllables " kung-ka-unk," re- 
peated three, four or five times. To the demor- 
alization of my throat I repeated these syllables 
loudly, making them as nearly as possible as the 
bird did. He replied promptly and betrayed 
interest by more rapid and longer performances. 
This continued until it was so dark that I could 
only just discern him with my glass, when sud- 
denly my attention was distracted by the sound 
of snipe flying overhead. Their performance 
is similar to that of the woodcock, but less elab- 
orate. Rising to a considerable height above 



178 LAND OF THE LINGERING SNOW, 

the meadow, they fly with rapid wing-beats round 
and round over it, making from time to time a 
series of short notes, similar to those produced 
by a person blowing in a rapidly intermittent 
way aci-oss the mouth of a small shallow bottle. 
Whether this noise is vocal or mechanical in 
character, the bird controls it, and stops it with- 
out stopping its flight. This evening the bird 
as a rule seemed satisfied with twenty-five or 
thirty successive notes in a series. 

My interest in the bittern was revived by 
hearing him once more at a distance. Nothing 
broke the level of the grass where his head had 
been in sight so long. He seemed to have 
moved quite rapidly over a space of a hundred 
yards or more, and to be retreating westward 
toward the woods and the brook. It was now 
quite dark, save for the stars and a feeble young 
moon in the western sky. The snipe were still 
flying as I left the meadow and picked my way 
carefully back to the turnpike. Their voices 
and those of frogs and piping hylas alone dis- 
turbed the restful stillness of the night. I 
looked up the road and down. It seemed like a 
great conduit with light gleaming from both ends 
along its white and level floor. Shoidd I walk 
to Belmont and wait for a ten o'clock train, or 
traverse pastures and an unknown swamp in 
order to reach Arlington Heights and later the 



ROCK MEADOW AT NIGHT. 179 

electric cars ? There was novelty in the latter 
alternative, and I chose it. 

Leaving Rock Meadow I crossed a field, then 
the road leading to the Belmont mineral spring, 
and entered a pasture. A number of cows were 
feeding by the light of the puny moon. They 
watched me suspiciously until the cedars con- 
cealed my hurrying form. Then I struck Marsh 
Street, and followed it uphill, until afar the tall 
electric light on the Heights flashed a message 
over intervening gloom. It was a mile distant. 
The first half of that mile was over land, or 
water, unknown to me. The second half was 
across the cedar-dotted pastures so often visited 
by me last winter. I left the road and struck 
into the unknown pasture, keeping the moon on 
my left and somewhat behind me. Cedars, 
pines, birches, well-armed barberry and black- 
berry bushes opposed my passage. Soon the 
land began to decline, the Arlington beacon was 
hidden, the air grew chilly, and the soil moist 
and soft. Then patches of water gleamed on 
my left, and the voices of frogs greeted me. A 
shaky stone wall was crossed, and the dry land 
turned to mud and tussocks of grass. Then 
came a ditch. This proved the crisis in the 
walk, for beyond it the land rose and soon I 
reached familiar ground. I recognized cedars 
which had suffered in the ice and snow storms 



180 LAND OF THE LINGERING SNOW. 

of January. Their backs were still bent. On 
my right were the dark woods in which I had 
found the most beautiful snow caverns, and near 
by was the ground frequented during long cold 
weeks by the flock of winter robins. The soft 
May night, with its frog music, was unlike those 
days of hyperborean delights. It was more com- 
fortable and more commonplace. The next 
stone wall was the one where snow fleas had 
swarmed by millions. I recalled in one of its 
angles the white snow bearing the footprints of 
quail and field mice. So I went on, picking 
my way cautiously over the dark ground until 
I came out into Park Avenue, close by the 
Heights. 

The view from the Heights at night is be- 
witching. Myriads of stars people the blue 
heavens, and myriads of baser stars people those 
depths below. The stars above differ one from 
another in glory ; the stars below differ one from 
another in evil. Those above tell of eternity 
and rest. Those below tell of toil, vanity, self- 
indulgence, crime, sickness, — the unrest of hu- 
man life. Still, being a man, I looked down 
into that sea of light, and seemed to find one star 
gleaming in the distance which was a part of the 
glory above, and related only by propinquity to 
the evil of the city. Towards that light I took 
my way, and finding it, put it out and went to 
bed. 



THE SECRETS OF THE MEADOW. 

There are days in May when the northwest 
wind sweeps through the trees with the bluster- 
ing rush of September air. It seems to be test- 
ing the young foliage and warning the soft, 
glossy, newly unfolded leaves of the fate which 
attends them only a few weeks later in the year. 
It is rough with the apple blossoms piled high 
upon the orchard's open arms, and it waves to 
and fro the " Christmas candles " of the horse- 
chestnut trees. On its breath is wafted the per- 
fume of lilacs, or the pungent message of pine 
woods burning, in spots left too long dry by the 
fickle spring rains. There is a chill in this 
turbulent air, not the damp chill of the east 
wind, but the chill which has in it a faint sug- 
gestion of autumnal frosts. Even after the wind 
goes to sleep at sunset the air remains cold, and 
farmers wonder if there is to be a late frost. 

Sunday, May 17, was such a day, and, as 
the woods were too full of noise and waving 
leaves for birds to be either heard or seen, my 
friend and I went to Rock Meadow to visit my 
bittern. We reached the willows at four in the 



182 LAND OF THE LINGERING SNOW. 

afternoon, feeling sure he would be present, be- 
cause his mate is undoubtedly somewhere in that 
quiet land of waving marsh grass, keeping warm 
her four or five drab eggs in her cunningly con- 
cealed nest. Between the wind gusts we listened 
intently to hear his now familiar note. He was 
not in the place where I had seen him before, 
but at half past four, as we reached the northern 
part of the meadow, I distinctly heard his boom- 
ing near at hand. We crept cautiously along the 
line of wall and bushes bounding the meadow on 
the north. Suddenly my friend gripped me by 
the shoulder and dragged me to the ground. A 
pair of black ducks flew by, scudding low over 
the bushes. We next disturbed a flock of twenty 
crows, which rose from an old cornfield where 
they had been feeding. Rock Meadow is a re- 
markable rendezvous for crows, summer and 
winter. What makes it so attractive I have 
thus far been unable to ascertain. These crows 
kept close watch upon us the rest of the after- 
noon. 

Standing upon a knoll capped with a few bar- 
berry bushes, we looked straight down the whole 
length of Rock Meadow. The rains of the past 
two days had given a wonderful impetus to the 
grass, which was now high enough to hide a bit- 
tern completely, unless he chose to raise his 
slender neck above it. With our glasses we 



THE SECRETS OF THE MEADOW. 183 

swept the wind -ruffled grass land thoroughly 
over and over again. The bittern was not to be 
seen. But almost at once my friend whispered 
excitedly, *' I see him," and by a common im- 
pulse we merged our outlines in those of the 
barberries behind us. The wary bird was in the 
edge of the meadow, at the foot of the slight 
slope on which we stood. His head and neck 
were raised above the grass, and resembled in 
size and color a cat-tail, which the wind and 
weather had reduced to a mass of flaxen seed- 
vessels loosely attached to their stalks. For 
several minutes he did not move, and with our 
eyes glued to the barrels of our field-glasses we 
watched his uplifted beak and stiffened neck. 
Slowly his head dropped, and with a premonitory 
shake disappeared in the grass. Seven seconds 
after it was flung up, so that the bill pointed to 
the sl^y, but it fell back as quickly into the 
grass. This was done four times, and each time 
the " kung-ka-unk " came to our ears. After 
this performance had been repeated several times, 
the bittern sank slowly beneath the grass, as 
though to begin pumping, but did not reappear. 
Waiting for a while, we walked a few rods along 
the edge of the meadow to a point where several 
oak trees spread their strong arms to the breeze. 
Concealed behind their trunks, we watched the 
sea of grass, and soon discovered the beak and 



184 LAND OF THE LINGERING SNOW. 

long stiffened neck of the bittern pointing 
towards the zenith, from a spot fifteen or twenty 
yards distant from the place which we had just 
left. He was quite as near ns as before, and 
this time he had no suspicion of our where- 
abouts. I climbed into the middle of one of the 
oaks, and my friend secured a comfortable posi- 
tion on the wall below, and with glasses and a 
stop-watch in constant use, we reduced the bit- 
tern's performance to its lowest terms. 

The bird, when at rest between his spasms, 
stood with his neck extended and raised, and his 
head and beak pointing forward and upward. 
The first indication that he was about to pump 
was a deliberate lowering of his beak to the 
level of his body, and the settling down into his 
breast and feathers of his long neck. This made 
his breast look larger and fuller than when his 
head was raised and his neck stretched upward. 
The slow motion of lowering the head into line 
with the body was followed by a slight shake of 
the head and throat, and the first of a series of 
motions which were caused apparently by volun- 
tary swallowing of air. The bill opened, the 
head was raised slightly and then dropped, and 
the bill closed with a snap. The first snap was 
scarcely audible, the second was much louder, 
the third, fourth, fifth, and sixth perfectly dis- 
tinct, and a seventh, when made, was less dis- 



THE SECRETS OF THE MEADOW. 185 

tinct, partly because instantly followed by the 
first " pump." Usually six or seven snaps were 
succeeded by three or four pumps, but the bird 
varied the number of snaps and pumps consider- 
ably, and I presume different bitterns would show 
marked individualities. By a " pump " I mean 
the triple sound which is called " booming," 
••' stakedriving," or " pumping," according to the 
fancy of the writer, and which to my ears sounds 
as much like " kung-ka-unk " as anything else. 
The head is in a line with the back when the 
" kung " is made, but as the first syllable reaches 
the ears of an observer, he sees the bird's head 
flung abruptly and sharply back, so that the bill 
points for a second to the zenith, and then sees 
it thrown down again to its former position. 
The " ka-unk " follows this spasm so closely that 
it is impossible to be certain whether the '*ka " is 
made on the upward stroke or on the downward. 
The three sounds " kung-ka-unk " occupy just 
about a second of time, which makes it clear 
how rapid is the motion of the head. The 
period from the instant that the head first 
reaches the level of the back to the instant when 
the fourth " unk " makes the end of the song, is 
in most cases exactly ten seconds in duration. 
Then the head is raised, the long neck extends 
itself, the breast grows smaller accordingly, and 
the bird resumes his stiffness and watchfulness. 



186 LAND OF THE LINGERING SNOW. 

My friend's stop-watch recorded thirty-seven 
seconds as the normal interval between the last 
pump of one performance and the first snap of 
the succeeding one. Twice during an hour the 
bittern sank beneath the grass and glided to a 
new spot. Once I caught a glimpse of him on 
his way, and he seemed to be moving more raj)- 
idly than the duration of his concealment indi- 
cated. From his third station he took flight, 
and, with long, graceful wing - strokes, flew an 
eighth of a mile down the meadow and alighted 
on the exact spot in which I had found him the 
Monday evening preceding. We hastened back 
to the turnpike and sought the cover I had 
previously used. As we listened to the bird at 
a distance, with a grove of trees interrupting his 
notes, the only sound which we could hear was 
the " ka," which, under the changed conditions 
became the true stake-driving " chuck " or 
" tock." The nearer we came to the bird, the 
less there remained of this acoustic metamorpho- 
sis, and as we crawled cautiously through the 
Toods to the edge of the swamp nearest him it 
disappeared altogether, and to our ears the 
" kung-ka-unk " was as distinct as before. We 
listened to and watched the strange genius of 
the marsh until he stopped his performance at 
twenty minutes of eight ; but our thoughts were 
at times diverted from him. 



THE SECRETS OF THE MEADOW. 187 

A short-billed marsh wren sang his quaint, 
nervous, and unmusical little song to us. It 
seemed to me, never having heard it before, that 
it was a sound well calculated not to be heard by 
any ears but those specially attuned to it. A 
similar thought had occurred to me earlier in the 
afternoon, when my friend called my attention 
to what he called the " background music " of 
the crickets, audible probabl}^ that day for the 
first time this year. They are sounds which go 
to form the great undertone of the day, and the 
ear is usually too busy with more distinctly sep- 
arated and louder sounds to take note of them. 
Let, however, the rest of the world's noises 
cease, or the listener become feverish and over 
sensitive to sound, and this " background music " 
surges into the brain like an incoming tide and 
thrills every nerve with its rapid rhythm. 

A sound which even a deaf man could not 
have ignored that evening was the persistent 
quacking, or rather quaarking, of a male black 
duck, who was exploring a ditch between us and 
the bittern. His better-half was near by, al- 
though silent, and I hope for her sake that his 
voice was more musical in her ears than in ours. 
After traversing the ditch the ducks flew, the 
male still bawling at his wife while in the air. 
It was not more than ten minutes before they 
returned, the drake quaarking, and plumped 
down into a small pool near by. 



188 LAND OF THE LINGERING SNOW. 

At ten minutes of eight, as we left the meadow 
and strolled towards our waiting carryall, the 
upper air resounded with the strange music of 
the flying snipe. My friend, who has heard this 
sound scores of times, feels confident that it is 
mechanical in character,— "drumming," in fact. 
To my ears it seems to be vocal in quality. 
Whichever it may be, its weird sweetness makes 
it one of the most attractive night or twilight 
sounds in nature. One accepts rather as a 
matter of course the sunlight singing of a light- 
hearted little finch or vireo, but for a shy recluse 
of the swamps to betake himself at evening to the 
heights of the sky, and there against the stars, 
invisible to all except the keenest eyes, to pro- 
duce his witching serenade, is something unique, 
and captivating to the imagination. 

Early in the day Rock Meadow told us two 
secrets which were very precious to two families 
of birds. In the great pollard willows which 
line the causeway are many comfortable crotches, 
angles and curves which appeal to nest builders. 
In one of these a robin had placed her nest and 
laid her eggs. Her bright eye watched us 
keenly as we drew near the tree, and the mo^ 
ment she felt the force of our gaze upon her, she 
slipped away to reproach us from a distance. 
Those greenish blue eggs were the first I had 
seen this year, and they seemed like precious 



THE SECRETS OF THE MEADOW. 189 

stones, so delicate were they in form and color. 
The willows have also many caverns of various 
sizes and shapes in their trunks. From one of 
these, through which and to the depths of which 
a man's hand could but just pass, a song sparrow 
sprang as we sauntered past. Fortunate for her 
that we were friends, for in the cave from which 
she came lay her five richly decorated eggs. As 
a rule this sparrow builds a grass nest by a 
brook bank, flat on the pasture turf, in a low 
evergreen in a meadow, or in a cup-shaped hol- 
low in a decaying stump. Among all the song 
sparrows' nests which my friend and I had seen, 
none approached this in the security and origi- 
nality of its location. 



WACHUSETT. 

By starting from Cambridge at half -past six 
A. M., on Saturday, May 23d, I was able to leave 
Fitchburg at nine behind an eccentric stable 
horse, bound for the top of Wachusett Moun- 
tain. The distance to the foot of the mountain 
was about nine miles. For the first four miles 
the road was far from agreeable. We encoun- 
tered rough pavements or dust, the obtrusive 
features of a young and by no means beautiful 
city, hillsides denuded of trees, and in many 
cases turned into quarries, the Nashua River 
defiled by mill-waste and stained by chemicals, 
railroad embankments coated with ashes and bare 
of verdure, and brick mill buildings, grim, noisy, 
and forbidding. The road gradually ascended, 
and at length crossed the river, passed under 
the railway and sought the woods. A parting 
glance down stream showed a mass of steeples, 
chimneys, brick walls, quarry derricks, freight 
cars, and dirty mill ponds flanked by wasted hill- 
sides and overhung by a cloud of smoke. Be- 
tween the smoke and the hurly-burly of the 
town a distant line of hills shone out on the 



WACHUSETT. 191 

horizon. It was a promise of something purer 
above. 

As we followed the hio-hwav southward 
toward Princeton we passed through no forests 
or remnants of forest, nothing but cleared land 
or new woodland in which birch, poplar, cherry, 
and other inferior growth predominated. The 
undergrowth was mainly mountain laurel, which 
a month from now will be a joy to the eye. 
Warblers sang in every thicket — the ovenbirds 
being especially noisy. Next to them the sweet 
but wearisome voice of the red-eyed vireo sounded 
on all sides. Brown thrushes were noticeably 
numerous and tame. Along the wayside, lady's 
slipper, white and purple violets, hawthorn, 
clintonia, blackberry vines and barberry bushes, 
painted trillium, chokeberry and chokecherry, 
star flower, and houstonia were abundant. The 
great size of the dandelions attracted our notice, 
and the violets were unusually large and beau- 
tiful. 

A little after eleven o'clock we emerged from 
between two ridges and saw the mass of Wachusett 
before us. A long even slope from northwest to 
southeast terminated in a flat summit, on which 
several wooden buildings stood out sharply and 
disagreeably against the sky. The southeastern 
slope was much more abrupt than the north- 
western, but far from precipitous. There was 



192 LAND OF THE LINGERING SNOW. 

nothing grand or impressive about the mountain 
apart from the simple fact of its height, two 
thousand feet. The carriage road to the sum- 
mit proceeds part way along the eastern base, 
then meets a road from Princeton and turns 
abruptly northwestward, makes several great 
serpent curves upon the northern and north- 
western face, and finally gains the summit from 
the east. The road is remarkably well sur- 
veyed, and is kept in good order. The eccen- 
tric stable horse, which up to the moment of 
our reaching the ascent had shown a willingness 
to go anywhere but to the mountain, started up 
the slope with such zeal that I found it impos- 
sible to keep up with him on foot. This made 
our progress rather more rapid than pleasant, 
and the charming glimpses of scenery below us 
and at a distance were only half appreciated. 
Most of the trees on the mountain seemed to be 
of recent growth, but among them dozens of 
scattered giants rose to show what lumbermen's 
greed might have left in the way of a forest if 
it had been restrained. Some of these large 
trees were sugar-maples, while others were yellow 
birches and beeches. The most striking flowers 
along the mountain road were creamy white 
bunches of early elder, pinkish purple rhodora, 
and rose-colored azalea just coming into bloom. 
Birds were few and far between on the moun- 



WAcnunErT. 193 

tain sides, although they had been plenty below. 
The call of the ovenbird occasionally reached 
our ears, and at one point the scolding of a 
superb scarlet tanager drew our eyes to the spot 
where his plumage seemed burning among the 
leaves. 

The summit, reached just at noon, proved 
anything but attractive. Stripped of trees and 
bushes, it has been afflicted by a large and com- 
monplace hotel, several barns and ugly sheds, 
and a bowling alley, billiard room, and tintype 
gallery. The north wind was polluted by the 
escaping odors of a cask of gasoline, and when 
we sought the groves below the crest, we encoun- 
» tered tin cans, broken bottles and other remains 
of previous seasons. When one seeks gasoline, 
electric bells, and a tintype gallery he has a 
right to feel pleased on finding them, but when I 
seek Nature on a mountain top and find her fet- 
tered by civilization, I have a right to feel 
aggrieved. However, we endeavored to forget 
man and his gasoline in the contemplation of 
the beautiful. 

What first struck us was the number of fires 
which were contributing columns of blue smoke 
to an atmosphere already dimmed by its thin 
strata. More than a dozen such fires were in 
sight. Thanks to them, the view was soft and 
dreamy in tone, giving the idea of distance more 



194 LANU OF THE LINGERING SNOW. 

by suggestion than by disclosure. Eastward 
and southward, where the smoke lay heaviest, 
the land seemed flat. Most of it was free from 
forest, but every few miles a dark line or spot 
told of a grove of pines saved thus far from the 
destroying hand of this generation of timber 
thieves. A few lakes caught the light of the 
sky and flashed it back to us, and scattered 
houses, usually white, broke the monotony of 
green fields and pastures. Marlborough on the 
east, Worcester on the south, Gardner on the 
west, and Fitchburg on the north were nuclei 
of houses, reminding me of the piles of sand 
which form themselves on a pane of sanded glass 
when a violin bow is drawn across its edge. 
Far away in the smoke on the western horizon 
rose the Berkshire Hills with proud Greylock 
dominant over them. I thought of the fair 
Connecticut flowing southward between them 
and us, and of the bright Hudson rolling be- 
yond them on its journey toward the modern 
Babylon. Northward of the Berkshires the sky 
line was ragged with hills and distant mountains 
in Vermont and New Hampshire, even to the 
point where, rising serenely from its granite 
bed, Monadnock reared its noble head toward 
the heavens. It alone in all that smoky land- 
scape was majestic. All else was soft, yielding, 
sleepy, but Monadnock rose with clear-cut out- 



WACHUSETT. 195 

lines and sharp summit, attracting the eye, fix- 
ing the attention, compelling admiration. On 
its right — that is, to the eastward — its pack 
strung out in perpetual pursuit of it. There 
was Peterborough in the fore and the Unca- 
noonucs far behind, Crotchett Mountain in the 
north and Watatic in the south — the latter 
" out of bounds," if the laws of this great chase 
require the pursuing hills to stay on New 
Hampshire soil. In the dim distance, beyond 
this group of sunny hills, hallowed in my mind 
by a thousand loving recollections of boyhood 
days, were other hills. What were they? I 
could not tell beyond the certainty that they 
were stepping stones to that far northland 
which I call home, Kearsarge, Cardigan, Cube, 
Moosilauke, Stinson, Ossipee, Chocorua ! I 
could recall the feeling of every summit under 
my weary foot, as I had pressed upon it with the 
satisfaction of a conqueror. Perhaps in a clear 
day some of those sentinel peaks of New Hamp- 
shire can be really recognized from Wachusett. 
After absorbing the beauties of the distant 
view we explored the stunted groves of beeches 
and oaks, mountain ash, striped and mountain 
maples below the summit. Here I found a robin, 
on a nest containing three eggs. The dwarfed 
trees, being numerous and well proportioned, 
seemed of normal size, but the bird, her nest 



196 I. AND OB' THE LINGERING SNOW. 

and I appeared to have expanded beyond our 
proper dimensions. The carpet under this grove 
was woven of beautiful forms. Its warp was of 
arbutus, false Solomon seal, checkerberry, straw- 
berry, and potentilla, its woof of clintonia, hob- 
ble bush, sarsaparilla, skunk currant, twisted 
stalk, and columbine. 

The arbutus was heavily laden with flowers 
which had spent their sweetness on birds and 
breezes. They were dry, and their lovely tints 
had changed to chestnut and russet. A great 
bed of anemones rippled in the wind. They 
seemed to be four weeks behind their sisters, 
which I had found so abundant at Heard's 
Island. In a low tree above them a junco 
called to his mate, and I felt confident that this 
mountain toj) had seemed to them a comfortable 
nesting spot. Two thousand feet upward is 
almost as good as two hundred miles northward. 
The Nashville warblers which I saw on or near 
the summit seemed also to agree to this prin- 
ciple. 

At half-past two we started down the moun- 
tain, and although our eccentric horse was even 
more anxious to go down than to go up, we suc- 
ceeded in seeing more of the view than while 
ascending. At the foot of the north slope of 
the mountain lay Wachusett Pond, a charming 
sheet of water, reminding me by its location and 



WACHUSETT. 197 

size of Dublin Pond, nestling at the north of 
Monadnock. Over it, beyond a multitude of 
farms, groves, and hills, Monadnock cut into the 
sky as the commanding feature of the sleepy 
landscape. This combination of lake and moun- 
tain was the most beautiful view Wachusett 
gave us. Although the summit of the moun- 
tain remained springlike, the lowlands along 
the Nashua River were burned deeply with the 
brand of summer. ^ Early flowers had gone, 
later ones were going. Migrant birds had 
mainly gone by, and the dry z-z-z-z~z-z-z-z of the 
blackpoll warbler wore on the edge of one's 
temper much as the song of the harvest fly does 
in its season. There are many pleasant views 
from the Fitchburg train as it hurries along from 
the valley of the Nashua across that of the 
Assabet and Musketaquid to that of the Charles : 
Wachusett across the vale of Leominster, As- 
sabet water at Concord Junction, the meadows 
of the Sudbury above Concord, the level fields 
which Emerson loved, Fairhaven Hill and 
Walden Pond where Thoreau studied life and 
its mysteries. Stony Brook, the Charles at Wal- 
tham, Waverley Oaks ; and then, across the 
Belmont marshes. Memorial and Mt. Auburn 
Towers, the emblems of eager life and the rest 
which eager life has no need to fear. 



IN THE WREN ORCHARD. 

One of the fairest spots known to me in the 
neighborhood of Cambridge is the " Wren 
Orchard." Thither on the morning of this Sun- 
day, May 24, I took my little covey of butter- 
cup hunters. The orchard was set out several 
generations ago, and not only the unknown 
hand which planted it but the house that shel- 
tered him and his have passed away forever. 
The ground where the orchard stands is a hill- 
side facing the south. Summer and winter 
the sun watches over it and only gentle winds 
sweep across it. North and east of this sunny 
Eden are elms which shut it out from inquisitive 
distance. Westward it is guarded by dark 
cedars, and along its southern edge rise rank 
upon rank of great oaks and chestnuts, in whose 
midst is a small swamp overhung by an- 
cient willows. The swamp is made by a gentle 
brook which begins life in the elm grove north 
of the orchard, spends all its days murmuring 
over a pebbly bed among forget-me-nots and 
violets, and which crosses the orchard at its 
middle. The orchard and its borders contain 



IN THE WEEN ORCHARD. 199 

high Land, low land, dry land, wet land, open 
land, wooded land, hard wood, soft wood, ever- 
green wood and apple wood — all the elements 
of home and shelter which a majority of land 
birds desire. No wonder then that snmmer and 
winter the wren orchard is alive with birds. 
As I write these words merry calls and music 
come from all its quarters in pleasing medley. 
Many of the birds have nests near by, others are 
building or planning where to place their nests. 
The latest migrants are now here. In the low 
land south of the orchard I hear a blackbilled 
cuckoo, saying " Coo-coo-coo, coo-coo-coo, coo- 
coo-coo-coo, coo-coo-coo-coo." In the largest of 
the elms east of the orchard an indigo bird is 
singing his clear and joyous notes. His coloring 
is as intense as that of a scarlet tanager which I 
have been watching in the highest branches of a 
great oak. Another late migrant, whose voice 
is in my ears, is the wood pewee. His notes, 
like most of the sounds made by the tyrant fly- 
catchers, are querulous and unmusical. He 
seems to be continually complaining that insects 
will not fly into his mouth. 

The thrush famil}^ inhabits this orchard in 
numbers. Robins build in the apple-trees, — 
a nest with four eggs in it is in the tree next me, 
— catbirds and brown thrushes dwell in the 
clumps and hedges of barberry bushes with 



200 LAND OF THE LINGERING SNOW. 

wliicli the orcliard abounds, and the mild-eyed 
veeiy lives near the swampy spot by the great 
willows. All of these singers have been pouring 
out their notes during the past hour. 

While my little buttercup hunters have been 
gathering great iistfuls of pure golden blossoms, 
the turf of the orchard has not been wholly 
theirs. Among a herd of a dozen deer-like 
Jersey heifers six cowbirds have been walking 
about catching flies ; chipping and song - spar- 
rows have hopped about in the grass ; robins, 
thrushes, and bluebirds have found worms in the 
earth, and I suspect that a great glossy crow 
who seems to have a nest in a high tree in the 
swamp has found something edible while stalk- 
ing up and down the brookside. From the 
thick woods to the south comes every now and 
then the clear " bob-white " of the quail, and 
they are near enough for me to hear the low 
" bob " which precedes the loud " bob " in their 
three-syllabled whistle. 

I brought two wicker baskets to-day, one con- 
taining milk, sandwiches, and strawberries, and 
the other a distinguished and important member 
of my household. His name is Puffy, and he now 
sits on the dead limb of an apple-tree, his great 
dark eyes solemnly gazing at a redstart, who is 
abusing him from a neighboring limb. His 
brown and white feathers blend so well with the 



IN THE WREN ORCHARD. 201 

rough bark of the apple tree that it requires 
sharjD or experienced eyes to see him. Puffy 
is one of two barred owls which I have held in 
happy captivity since June 1, 1888, the day on 
which I took them from their ancestral castle in 
a White Mountain forest. Puffy is not a favor- 
ite with other birds. They dislike and distrust 
him, and when I place him in a tree, from which 
a crippled wing prevents his flying, they come to 
him in dozens, scolding and complaining at his 
very existence in their midst. To-day, while 
the last petals of the apple blossoms have been 
falling around him, most of the birds already 
named, and in addition kingbirds, least fly- 
catchers, redstarts, black - and - white creepers, 
ovenbirds, black- throated green warblers, red- 
eyed and solitary vireos, downy and golden- 
winged woodpeckers, rose-breasted grosbeaks 
and chickadees have perched or hovered near, 
noisily expressing their bitter feelings towards 
him. Sometimes I see his great round head 
turned towards the sky, and his eyes fix them- 
selves upon some moving bird. A chimney 
swift or a barn swallow attracts him for a second 
only, but if a hawk or a crow crosses his 
heavens his eyes never leave it until it disap- 
pears from view. He cares little or nothing 
for the abuse of other birds, but if they actually 
assaidt him, as kingbirds and flickers often do. 



202 LAND OF THE LINGERING SNOW. 

his serenity is marred. It is still a little early 
in tlie season for birds to become frantic at liis 
presence. When the robins, vireos, and chick- 
adees have tender young dependent on them, the 
sight of Puffy will drive them into paroxysms of 
rage. 

I have called this warm pasture flecked with 
buttercups and fallen apple petals the " Wren 
Orchard." It deserves the name, for it is the 
only spot in New England that I have ever 
visited where house wrens survive and build 
regularly. Even now I hear the jingling notes 
of this once common but now rare bird falling 
like drops of water from a fountain through the 
sunlit air. Two years ago (May 26, 1889) I 
found one of their nests. Attracted by the 
showery notes of the male I crept into a cor- 
ner of the orchard, where an old apple - tree 
grew alone in a circle of privet and barberry 
bushes. Concealed under their branches I 
watched the tree. Soon a wren appeared, then 
disappeared in the substance of the tree. Its 
tiny body seemed to melt into the bark of a 
horizontal limb about twelve feet above the 
ground. I examined this limb, seeking a hole 
in it, but found none. After a second period of 
w^atching I saw that the bird passed into the 
limb by a hole on its under side. I climbed the 
tree, measured the extent of the hole, which was 



IN THE WREN ORCHARD. 203 

seven or eight inches, and then cut a neat door 
into it from above. There on a mass of soft 
shredded bark and odds and ends of forest fibre 
lay seven tiny eggs. They were round little 
eggs, having a salmon-white groundwork thickly 
and uniformly covered with hundreds of minute 
reddish brown spots. 

Bluebirds also build in this orchard, and so 
do downy woodpeckers, flickers, and chickadees ; 
all birds which rear their families in the hollows 
of trees. A bluebird's nest which I found here 
was placed at the bottom of a dark dry cavity in 
an apple trunk. The hole was large enough for 
a somewhat slender hand to pass through, and 
so deep that half the forearm was in the hole be- 
fore the eggs could be touched. Once in a while 
the bluebird lays pure white eggs, but generally 
they are pale blue, and to an unpracticed eye 
might suggest a reflection of the sky in a pool of 
rain water at the bottom of the hole. Almost all 
birds which nest in hollow trees lay unmarked 
white eggs. 

While I am writing a downy woodpecker and 
a flicker both make their voices heard in the 
orchard. 

The barberry bushes are in bloom to-day, and 
I have amused my buttercup hunters by show- 
ing them how the barberry flowers set traps for 
their insect visitors. As one turns up the yellow 



204 LAND OF THE LINGERING SNOW. 

cup of the flower and looks into it, he sees the 
stamens pressed against the inner curve of the 
petals and away from the central column of the 
pistil. If a straw be gently pressed upon the 
base of the stamens the latter jump forward and 
clasp it tightly enough to hold it. This pres- 
sure covers the embraced surface with yellow 
pollen, and in the case of an insect would make 
it perfectly certain that in shaking himself free 
he would not only rub some of the pollen upon 
the pistils of the flower he was in, but that he 
would bear away enough of it to cross-fertilize 
the next blossom he entered. 

I can hear the songs of a robin, an oriole, and 
a rose-breasted grosbeak. They have marked 
differences, yet I find many people are unable to 
distinguish them unaided. A thrush, a starling, 
and a finch should not sing alike, but in Cam- 
bridge the three birds build in the same trees, 
and mingle in their daily lives so constantly that 
it is possible they have learned to speak alike. 
The robin's song is animated, but rough and 
full of harsh passages. It reminds me of a 
farmer's boy bellowing his favorite tune as he 
drives his oxen home through a wood road. 
The oriole often makes music, but his voice is 
apt to crack and flat until his silence seems 
golden. The grosbeak sings the robin's theme 
with all the robin's spirit, but without the 



IX THE WREX ORCHARD. 205 

robin's harshness. It is a stirring, bold, free 
song, having little musical merit and no pathos, 
but plenty of " go " and '^ swing," The metallic 
squeak which the bird generally makes just 
before he begins his song is an odd and unmis- 
takable sound, which once learned never fails to 
identify this beautiful finch. 

Back of the orchard in the evergreens I hear a 
chickadee calling, and a moment ago a blue jay's 
scream attracted my notice. Their voices carry 
me back many Sundays to those winter days 
when I began my walks. This slope now soft with 
thick grass and splendid with golden buttercups, 
shy violets, jolly little potentillas and pale wild 
geraniums swaying in the breeze, was then 
eighteen inches deep in snow. These trees now 
arrayed in lustrous foliage were then encased in 
ice armor or muffled in the snow which crushed 
the cedars to the earth and wrecked yonder 
prostrate willow, whose fall I remember seeing 
and hearing. The blue jays, chickadees, and 
robins which frequented this warm pasture in 
January are probably hundreds of miles from 
here to-day, rearing their young in the woods 
and fields of the far north. The glistening snow 
which then burdened the earth and trees is now 
gleaming in this brook, flowing as life blood 
through these tree trunks, forming the chief 
part of these brightly tinted leaves of grass, 



206 LAND OF THE LINGERING SNOW. 

ferns, brakes, flowers and shrubs, or floating 
high in that warm sky, and as a pure spirit of 
the past smiling upon the land of plenty to 
which it never was unfriendly or unkind. Yes, 
the winter has melted into spring and now the 
spring has blossomed into summer. Nature, 
once so cold and white and still, is now warm, 
gleaming with many tints and trembling with 
growth in every marvellous group of its restless 
molecules. The tide of life was ebbing in 
January. Now it is nearing the flood. Then 
the soul of man needed courage and faith to 
make it believe that the frozen world had un- 
quenchable life, persistent force, locked up in it. 
Now the soul needs the intelligence of God to 
enable it to count the wonders of realization 
which burning life and exuberant energy have 
placed above, below, and on every side. 

As I look at this grass and the flowers which 
shine in its midst, at the myriad leaves upon the 
trees, at the butterflies, caterpillars, locusts, ants, 
and bees, and at the birds, solicitous for their 
eggs or young, should I be sorrowful because 
in a few days the annual tide of life will turn 
and the grass begin to ripen, the flowers to fade, 
the butterflies to die, and the birds to take note 
of the sky and begin their journey southward? 
No. The rhythm of the universe demands just 
this coming and going, rising and falling, ex- 



IN THE WREN ORCHARD. 207 

panding and contracting, living and dying. 
Without reaction there could be no action. 
Without death we should not know what life 
meant ; without what we call sorrow there could 
be no joy. 

I hear the song of the veery down there under 
the willows. It is a weird, ventriloquial song. 
The bird seems making its gypsy music to 
itself, not to the world. In that dark corner 
the trillium grows, keeping its face hidden un- 
der its cloak. There, too, the jack-in-the- 
pulpit is found masking its face. The song of 
the veery has in it the tinkling of bells, the 
jangle of the tamborine. It recalls to me the 
gypsy chorus in the " Bohemian Girl," and when 
I hear it as evening draws on, I can picture light 
feet tripping over the damp grass, and in the 
shadows made by moving of branches and ferns 
I can see dark forms moving back and forth in 
the windings of the dance. 



CHOCORUA. 

A May rain after a spring drought has a 
wonderfully reviving effect upon the landscape. 
It washes away dust, expands tissues, intensifies 
colors, deepens shadows and heightens contrasts ; 
fills the brooks, and veils the horizon in white 
mist. On May 29, just after the sun, presum- 
ably in rubber boots and a mackintosh, had 
crossed the meridian, a train rolled out of Bos- 
ton, bound for the north. Its windows were 
soon wet and covered with coal ashes. Rain- 
drops were driven at all angles across them, dis- 
torting the landscape and discouraging observa- 
tion. The rain accompanied the train to the 
end of its journey. It beat upon the Saugus 
marshes and the sands of Revere Beach, and it 
splashed into the rushing tide of the Merrimac 
flowing seaward at Newburyport. Tlie Hampton 
marshes were strikingly picturesque in the storm. 
Near the train the lush grass on the flats could 
be seen bowing before the gusts. The tide- 
rivers and channels were full to their brim, and 
showed snowy white under the colorless sky and 
between their verdant banks. Within their 



CHOCORUA. 209 

meshes and reaching on to the invisible sea, were 
thousands of acres of green marsh dotted with 
haystacks, or the round groups of piles from 
which the stacked hay had been removed. The 
most distant stacks looked no larger than thim- 
bles, and were dim in the fast falling rain. As 
the train sped over the marshes these distant hay- 
cocks seemed to move as little as the sun would 
have, had it been hurrying on that far line of 
sky, while the near ones swung swiftly past, and 
those intermediate went with them, yet more 
slowly. The marsh seemed like a great wheel 
revolving beside us, its lines of haycocks being 
the innumerable spokes forever whirling past. 

The rain pelted the Piscataqua at Portsmouth, 
and almost hid the great ship-houses at the Kit- 
tery Navy Yard. It was beating upon Milton 
ponds as the train rolled past them, and it was 
swelling the flood of Bearcamp water as we 
gained Ossipee valley. Of course no mountains 
were to be seen. They were hidden in the roll- 
ing masses of vapor which filled the upper air. 
Towards them, however, and into their midst we 
continued our journey by stage. The trees were 
dripping with rain, patches of mist trailed west- 
ward over the hill-tops, the bushes and flowers 
by the roadside glistened with moisture. In 
places the air was heavy with the spicy breath 
of the choke-cherry, whose multitudes of finger- 



210 LAND OF THE LINGERING SNOW. 

shaped racemes drooped under the weight of 
rain. The perfume of this tree is, at certain dis- 
tances, akin to that of the heliotrope. White 
and purple violets, star-flower, chokeberry, false 
Solomon's seal, fringed polygala, and dwarf cornel 
blossomed by thousands on every side. Brakes 
were just opening, many being still coiled, wait- 
ing some elfin touch to expand, but the ferns 
were present in force. They are one of the 
triumphs of nature. Numerous in species, ex- 
quisite in form, tender in color, graceful in mo- 
tion, harmless in growth, wholesome in odor, sen- 
sitive yet persistent, refined yet abundant. Some 
of them perish at the first frost, as for example 
the onoclea ; others like the Christmas-fern and 
polypody remain green and buoyant all winter, 
even when half buried in snow or covered by ice. 
The coloring of the osmunda r eg alls as it un- 
folds is in beautiful contrast to that of the other 
osmundas^ the former being light red, salmon 
colored, orange, or even bright red, and the lat- 
ter silvery green. Bird voices were not quenched 
by the rain. The harsh squawk of the night-hawk 
came from the mist ; hermit thrushes sang in 
damp balsam cloisters, chimney swifts sprinkled 
the air with their small notes, and the thin voices 
of warblers were heard in every thicket. Here, 
as in Cambridge, the migration seemed to be 
over and resident species present in full force. 



CHOCORUA. 211 

The stage turned into a narrow ribbon road 
lined with white-stemmed birches. The road 
pointed straight towards Chocorua, whose vast 
base rose like a wail across the north, meeting 
the even line of white cloud which concealed its 
peak. To the right, glimpses of water revealed 
the position of Chocorua Lake. The ribbon 
road led to a red-roofed cottage in the midst of 
an ancient orchard, and there stopped. This cot- 
tage stands within the limits of the wilderness. 
In winter the snow lies around it in deep drifts, 
and for many weeks at a time no snowshoe 
leaves its latticed imprint near. The moun- 
tain broods over it, and when in cold nights the 
groaning of the ice gives the lake voice, it tells 
the cottage the story of its journey from the sky 
and its plans for reaching the sea. From the 
days after the civil war until five years ago, this 
cottage was the home of the children of the 
forest. Man left it to be shingled by lichens 
and glazed by cobwebs. Snow lay deep in its 
attic, pewees nested in the angles of its rooms, 
snakes and skunks dwelt in its foundations, 
generations of swifts were hatched in its chim- 
ney, and chipmunks frolicked in its empty rooms. 
To the deer, the crow, the fox, and the hedge- 
hog, this house had no terrors. It had ceased 
to belong to man. Although of late years it 
has been my home, I have done what I can to 



212 LAND OF THE LINGERING SNOW. 

maintain the belief among the creatures of the 
forest that it belongs to them. 

It was seven o'clock as the stage rolled up to 
the cottage door, left us, turned around and 
departed. Inside, a fire blazed on the old 
hearth, and the bark on the birch logs sputtered 
and crackled like burning fat. Outside, the rain 
fell softly, making a pleasant murmur on the 
leaves, a murmur which blended with the voices 
of crickets, tree toads, hylas, and frogs. As 
night fell and the fire burned low, the clock and 
the whippoorwills began a conversation which 
lasted long, perhaps till morning. 

A rainy morning does not discourage birds. 
They are just as hungry, and almost if not quite 
as tuneful as on other days. The morning of 
the 30th of May was warm and wet, but the air 
was as full of bird notes as of rain drops. A 
white-throated S23arrow sang fea-j)ea-jpeahody^ 
peabody^ peahody^ under my window ; a cat- 
bird in the grape-vine in front of the house rev- 
elled in a medley of notes, hermit thrushes ren- 
dered their sweet phrases from three neighboring 
groves, and red-eyed vireos, chestnut-sided war- 
blers, redstarts, ovenbirds, barn-swallows, and 
swifts filled in any gaps with their joyous voices. 
A pair of catbirds were building their nests in the 
lilac bush at the corner of the cottage, so near a 
window that a long arm could reach it. The 



CHOCORUA. 213 

pewees were feeding their young in a nest at 
the top of a pilaster under the eaves of the 
house. The piazza rail was their perch all 
through the day. They have occupied the nest 
three years. The nest used in 1888 is in an angle 
of the roof near by. The pewee has a trick 
which it is hard to explain. It jerks its tail up- 
ward sharply about once in two seconds. The 
motion is petulant in character, but suggestive 
of eternal vigilance. Both birds caught insects 
for their young, and the feeding process seemed 
perpetual. Over the dairy window is a wooden 
gutter to catch the rain from the roof. This 
being a dry spring, a foolish robin built in the 
gutter, near its lower end. The nest was soaked 
by the storm on the 29th and 30th, and partly 
dissolved by the trickling water, but the robin 
stuck to her eggs. The noisiest birds anywhere 
near the cottage were a pair of great-crested fly- 
catchers. They screamed or whistled all day. 
Their voices are harsh, their tempers and man- 
ners bad, but their nesting habits are very inter- 
esting. They build every year in the hollow of 
an apple tree, where a large limb broke off long 
asfo and 2:ave the elements a chance to make a 
deep, dark cavity. The last nest I examined 
consisted of cow's hair, reddish fur, feathers, a 
squirrel's tail, grasses, dry leaves, shreds of birch 
bark, and many small pieces of snake-skin. One 



214 LAND OF THE LINGERING SNOW. 

year nearly the whole o£ a discarded snake-skin 
was placed in a circle around the eggs. I have 
yet to find one of their nests without a piece of 
snake-skin in it. I think the bird uses it be- 
cause experiments tried by previous generations 
have shown that the skin is useful in scaring 
away squirrels, mice, and other enemies. Be- 
tween the cottage and the lake I found a song 
sparrow's nest. It was built in marked contrast 
to the one in the willow tree on Concord turn- 
pike. Flat on the ground at the edge of a ditch, 
its only shelter was a bunch of brush, cut last 
season and left to dry. From above, the nest 
and its contents were perfectly concealed, but 
by stooping down and looking in from the bank 
of the ditch I could see the neat grass cup and 
its four richly colored eggs. The bird in leav- 
ing the nest showed herself expert in dodging. 
She glided from beneath the brush and over the 
edge of the ditch, much as a leaf might have if 
impelled by the wind. Dropping to the bottom 
of the trench she ran down its gravelly bottom 
nearly to the shore of the lake before she took 
wing for the woods. Although the chipping 
sparrow spends most of its summer in the grass, 
it builds its nest of coiled horse-hair in the 
branch of an apple-tree, at least eight or ten feet 
from the ground. One of their nests was nearly 
finished in a tree near the dining-room window. 



CHOCORUA. 215 

The swifts had not begun building in the 
chimney, but the cause of their delay was discov- 
ered when one of them was found beating against 
the inside of an upstairs chamber window. The 
poor frightened creature had come down the 
chimney into the fireplace, and had j^robably been 
a captive for several days. Holding it gently but 
firmly in my left hand, I endeavored to hypno- 
tize it, as I had the peabody bird on April 80th. 
Its brown eyes looked at me beseechingly, and 
it winced whenever I touched it. Its flat head, 
tiny beak leading to a wide mouth, long slender 
wings, insignificant feet and legs, and strange 
little tail, with bare spikes at the tips of the 
feathers, combined to form a creature more like 
a living arrow than a denizen of earth. Tak- 
ing it out-of-doors I caressed it a moment more 
and then slowly opened my fingers. Could it 
be that the tiny being, which I might have 
crushed by one grip of my hand, possessed a 
speed almost equal to a projectile, and a brain 
powerful enough to will that speed and to direct 
it?' Like a breath the bird was gone. Those 
slender wings throbbing through the air bore it 
higher and higher, round and round in widen- 
ing circles, until it was lost in the depths of the 
sky. I felt as though I had held a soul in my 
hand and as though that soul had gone back to 
the infinite. 



216 LAND OF THE LINGERING SNOW. 

Standing in tlie deep woods by the side of a 
rushing stream I watched a slender silk line 
borne down with the current. The line straifrht- 

o 

ened. One end was restrained by the tip of 
my fishing rod, the other end swayed from right 
to left in a little whirlpool under a miniature 
waterfall. On the lower end was a barbed 
hook, on the hook was a writhing worm, and 
presently on the writhing worm was a strug- 
gling fish. Tossed to the shore he fell among 
the nodding ferns and lay under them on his 
side, gasping. He threw himself into the air 
a few times by a spasmodic contraction of his 
muscles, and then died. As he lay there among 
the ferns, violets, wild lilies of the valley, 
gleaming checkerberries, and other gayly-tinted 
groundwork of the forest, he outshone them all. 
White, gray, yellow, orange, red, green, blue, 
brown, and black, — all shared in his brilliant 
coloring. His beauty was not all in tints. His 
outlines were graceful and suggestive of speed. 
His fins, delicate and wonderful structures in 
themselves, were so placed as to give him marvel- 
lous powers of motion and control of direc- 
tion. A moment before he had had not only 
beauty and speed but intelligence. The cun- 
ning and wariness of the trout are proverbiaL 
But he was dead, and I went on down the 
stream for an hour, catching and killing more 



CHOCORUA. 217 

marvels of color and design until I had enough 
for dinner. 

The surroundings of a good trout brook are 
much more fascinating than the fishing. The 
woods are lonely as regards mankind, but they 
are full of wild life and the bustle of that life. 
The fisherman always realizes the bustle of the 
mosquitoes and black flies, but he is not so quick 
to appreciate the gypsy music of the veery, the 
rich notes of the solitary vireo or the water 
thrush, or the gorgeous coloring of the Maryland 
yellowthroat, blackburnian warbler, and Canada 
flycatching warbler, which, ten chances to one, 
are his unseen companions during the day. 

In the afternoon I visited my favorite pair of 
sap-sucking woodpeckers whose beginnings of 
housekeeping I had noted on May 1st. Their 
maple tree which had yielded sap all last summer, 
and again for a time this spring, seemed to be dry. 
Perhaps in a sunless wet day sap does not flow 
freely. The holes cut by the birds this season 
numbered over five hundred, and their location 
on various parts of the trunk indicated that the 
birds found difficulty in securing as free a flow 
of sap as they needed. All told, there are now 
fully fifteen hundred holes in the bark of that 
one red maple. As I neared the tree in which 
the male had been drilling a month ago, I 
chanced to look at a dead poplar about twenty 



218 LAND OF THE LINGERING SNOW. 

feet in height which stood near it. To my aston- 
ishment I discovered the head of the male sap- 
sucker protruding from a hole in its side. He 
saw me and saw that I saw him. The hole was 
fifteen feet from the ground, on the southeast 
side of the stump. The male flew away. See- 
ing neither bird near the hole which I had 
planned to attack, I decided to cut down the 
stump. It toppled against some low evergreens, 
which broke the force of its fall. The hole 
was less than a foot in depth, and contained two 
chubby little white eggs, through whose shell 
the color of the yolk was plainly visible. The 
bottom of the hole was cushioned with fine chips. 
Concealing myself, I waited to see what the 
woodpeckers would do. They had watched my 
work, and had not gone out of my sight at all. 
Flying to the tree nearest the poplar, they aimed 
for the spot where it had been, and flew to it, 
hovered a second and returned. This was done 
over and over again, but much oftener by the 
female than by the male. Failing to find the 
stump by flying from the nearest tree, they tried 
to strike it by approaching it from other trees 
standing respectively to the south, southwest, 
west, and northeast of its former position. The 
stump itself, prostrate among the ferns, was 
wholly ignored. The birds showed no grief, 
indignation, or fear, nothing but astonishment 



cnocoRUA. 219 

at the disappearance of their focus. I think it 
possible that one or both birds had been hatched 
in this poplar, and had in turn reared families 
in it, for it contained an old hole below the new 
one. 

On my way home I crossed the fresh tracks 
of a deer, its sharp hoofprints having been made 
since the heavy rains of the forenoon. 

Nearing the barn, I was greeted by the whin- 
ing squeals of a newly captured baby barred 
owl. It had been found in the same hollow in 
a giant beech from which my two favorite pets 
were taken June 1, 1888. When first seen, 
about May 10, it was too small to be carried 
away. Even on May 17, the day on which its 
capture was completed, it was only a double 
handful of soft gray down and stomach, accent- 
uated by claws, hooked beak and a squealing 
voice. By May 30 it had grown into the like- 
ness of an owl. Its stiff wing and tail feathers 
had begun to grow long, and much of its plum- 
age to assume the distinctive markings of the 
family. Its head and breast were still downy, 
and Its eyes, feeble In sight, looked milky and 
bluish. In answer to Its clamor, I gave It 
a handful of angleworms, and a bullfrog neatly 
jointed. Tucked up for the night in a cloth 
and warmed by my hand, it made a series of 
chuckles amusingly similar In character to the 
contented peeplngs of a brood of chickens. 



220 LAND OF THE LINGERING SNOW. 

About five o'clock Sunday morning (May 
31) a deer stepped boldly out of the woods at 
the top of a sloj^ing field and surveyed the val- 
ley below it. A small farmhouse from whose 
chimney a column of pale blue smoke rose into 
the hazy air, a big barn with cattle standing in 
front of it, a man milking one of the cows, a 
green meadow dotted with vivid green larches, a 
small round pond framed in grass and weeds of 
just the kind deer like best — this was the picture 
the deer saw and found pleasant to its eye so. 
It walked down the hill, crossing a strip of 
plowed land, leaped over a brush fence, and 
paused in the highway. The cow which was 
being milked raised her head and gazed fixedly 
at the deer. The man felt the cow's motion, and 
looked too. Seeing the deer he whistled shrilly. 
The deer threw up its head, shook its stub tail, 
crossed the road with a bound, plunged through 
the larches and vanished in the deep dark woods 
by the lake. 

It was an hour when bird voices filled the 
air with their messages of love and happiness. 
The rain had ceased, the sun was shining ; no- 
thing: came between these children of the air 
and their completest joy. If one wishes to be- 
lieve that life may be and is happy, look at the 
birds at the opening of summer and see how 
seldom a shadow crosses their path. Even if 



CHOCORUA, 221 

danger threatens for a moment, if a snake ap- 
pears in the grass, a hawk in the air, an owl 
in the thicket, a man near their nest, joy returns 
the moment danger is gone. There are tragedies 
of the nests, and many a bird falls a victim to 
destroyers, but on the whole the life of birds is 
joyous, not sorrowful ; contented, not anxious. 
I sought the birds that morning in their deep- 
est solitude, their inner temple. Wading ice- 
cold brooks in which I alarmed many a trout, 
forcing a way through thickets of high-bush 
blueberry, alder, and tangled vines, plunging 
through soft spots in the bog where I sank to 
my knees, I came finally to the cool dark shades 
in the centre of a great swamp. Several 
tall pines reared their heads above it. From 
their lower limbs, long since dead and dry, 
beards of gray moss depended and swung back 
and forth. An under forest of water maples, 
balsam firs, larches, and white ash trees flour- 
ished beneath the giant pines. Below these in 
turn a miniature forest of ferns and hobble bush 
grew, and still lower the moist ground surround- 
ing numerous pools of amber-colored water was 
covered by a carpet of clintonia, veratrum, or- 
chids, gold-thread, swamp blackberry, dalibarda, 
and fernlike mosses. Who, if any, were the 
dwellers in this solitude of solitudes ? Not the 
robin or the bluebird, the song sparrow or the 



222 LAND OF THE LINGERING SNOW. 

redwing blackbird ; they are birds of the farm 
or the meadow, not of the twilight. I listened. 
" Teacher, teacher^ teacher," came the call of 
the ovenbird ; then followed the bold, spar- 
kling song of the water thrush, the tambourine 
music of the veery, conversational cawing and 
chortling of crows, and the familiar chick-a- 
dee-dee-dee of the titmouse. Were these the 
principal owners of the shades ? The ringing- 
notes of a rose-breasted grosbeak, the quanh, 
quanh of a Canada nuthatch, a black-and-white 
creeper's apology for a song, and then a thin 
painstaking voice I did not recognize, came to 
show that the roll of the swamj)'s tenants was not 
complete. Just as I made out the last singer to 
be a black-throated blue warbler, a winter wren 
sang. The brilliancy of this petulant brown and 
white atom's music is one of the wonders of the 
northern woods. It is orchestral in nature 
rather than vocal, and it is one of the longest 
songs I know. It seems to me like falling drops 
of crystal water in which the sunbeams play and 
give out rainbow tints. If I tried to describe 
it I should say it was like the music of tiny 
spheres of silver, falling upon slabs of marble 
and rebounding only to fall again and again at 
briefer intervals, until their perfectly clear, ring- 
ing notes had run into one high, exjDiring tone too 
delicate for the ear of man to follow. The wren 



CHOC OR U A. 223 

sang over and over again, and each cooling spray 
of notes seemed more bewitching than the last. 
Meantime I had recognized blue yellow- 
backed or parula warblers, and that charming 
bird, the vivacious Canadian flycatching war- 
bler. As I strolled on slowly through the moss- 
hung shades a large bird flew from a maple 
a rod or two before me and perched on a high 
limb, so that I saw it against a patch of sky. 
Quickly covering it with my glass I saw that 
it was a hawk of the largest size, probably 
the buteo pemisylvanicus or broad-winged hawk. 
To my surprise the great creature flew back 
towards me and alit in a tree which sprang 
from a point close by. It saw me, and was peer- 
ing keenly and anxiously through the leaves. 
A wild and weird cry escaped from its open 
throat, and it flew in a half circle and perched 
again near by. Creeping under a balsam tree 
I sat down and awaited developments. A rush 
of wings, a shadow, and I saw the hawk's mate 
sweep downwards and alight upon the edge of 
a large nest of branches and twigs in a tall 
maple just in front of me. It saw me as it 
struck the nest, and instantly swooped down 
towards me, passing within two or three feet 
of my head. Both birds then took positions 
commanding a good view of me and made the 
woods echo with their fierce cries. They were 



224 LAND OF THE LINGERING SNOW. 

within easy range of a shotgun, but I had no desire 
to injure them. The broad-winged hawk lives 
mainly upon insects, small animals, and reptiles, 
and is no menace to poultry or small birds. In 
this instance the small birds in the swamp sang 
their songs with no apparent interest in the 
angry hawks above them. 

A visit to the nest showed that its limited and 
uncomfortable platform sustained three downy 
young birds whose plump bodies were so placed 
that the three heads faced the circumference of 
the nest at three different points. They looked 
as though they had been out of the shell about a 
week. A half -eaten yellow-throated frog was 
in the bottom of the nest. During this in- 
spection the parent birds were flying in small 
circles a thousand feet or more above the swamp. 
I think their first boldness was due to my 
stealthy approach and quick concealment, which 
left them in doubt as to what manner of crea- 
ture I was. As the young birds were not 
quite large enough to make it safe to take them 
prisoners they were left for a time to the tender 
care of their natural protectors. 

Not far from the hawk's nest I found the tree 
from which my barred owls had been taken in 
1888 and this year. The tree is a baech over 
sixty feet high, having in its great trunk a 
cavity large enough to admit a man's head and 



CHOCORUA. 225 

arm. This chamber, which faces southwest- 
ward, is about twenty-five feet from the ground, 
dry within but unfurnished. The owlets have 
no feather beds to sleep on, no nest to keep 
them warm. Thinking that the mother of my 
most recent captive miglit have laid again, I had 
the owl castle searched, but found nothing. 

The flowers of the week were the cornel, 
fringed polygala, cow-lily, purple and white vio- 
lets, blue-eyed grass, clintonia, and hawthorn. 
The dark swamps were dotted with the yellow 
moccasin flowers, and in the higher, drier woods 
the pink lady's-slipper abounded. The varia- 
tion in color in the pink lady's-slipper is wide 
for a wild plant not separated into recognized 
varieties. From normal, the color varies both 
ways, to extremely dark carmine and to pure 
white. In some of the white ones even the 
veining is immaculate. I found two distorted 
flowers of the pink species which suggested a 
reversion to a less elaborate and morphologically 
effective form. The flowers which were passing 
away were the trailing arbutus, of which I 
found only one plant still blooming and fra- 
grant ; the apple blossoms, which were whitening 
the grass like snow ; the trilliums, hobble bush, 
choke cherry, rhodora, uvularia and anemone. 
The flowers just coming forward were the lin- 
naea, white orchis, fleur-de-lis, and clover. 



226 LAND OF THE LINGERING SNOW. 

From four o'clock until sunset we drove, taking 
for our road the one leading around three sides 
of fair Chocorua Pond, thence up the Chocorua 
River to the eastern side of the mountain. 
The afternoon was sultry, and over the moun- 
tains the outlines of thunder-heads faintly edged 
with gold showed through a bluish white haze. 
The mountains looked double their usual height, 
and thin, for detail, light and shadow, were lost 
in the haze. Parts of the lake were broken into 
small waves, and every wave was a tongue of fire 
borrowed from the red sun. Under the lofty 
white pines fringing the eastern shore the shade 
was deep and soothing, and a faint breeze made 
the foliage breathe and sigh. From the edge of 
the water a little bird flew up to a branch, shook 
itself and presented apparently novel coloring. 
Not until this interesting scrap of tropical life 
began to dry and smooth down its feathers did 
it become recognizable as a black-throated green 
warbler fresh from a bath. At the northeast 
corner of the lake a broad beach of white sand 
extends for an eighth of a mile in crescent form. 
The water in this bay is shallow, and under it 
the sand is clean. Chocorua's horn was reflected 
in the heart of this bay, while sleepy pickerel and 
schools of minnows could be seen poised above the 
sand. Spotted sandpipers ran along the beach, 
kingbirds shot out from tall pines and hovered, 



CHOCORUA, 227 

chattering, with tails wide spread, over the 
water. In the orchard opposite, a great-crested 
flycatcher screamed and flew from tree to tree. 
Her nest was in the gaping hollow of an apple 
trunk, and on its outer edge a bit of snake-skin 
caught the light. No eggs had as yet been laid. 
The muffled drumming of a grouse could be felt 
by the ear as its heavy throbbing came down 
from high woods back of the orchard. 

The Chocorua River has three phases of life 
above the pond, — mountain torrent ; placid 
meadow brook and mill pond ; and forest river 
fall of deep amber pools, dams of fallen trees 
and sawmill waste, and noisy falls and rapids. 
The road avoids the forest part and emerges on 
the mill pond and meadow. The meadow was 
alive with birds. At the ford a solitary tattler 
was feeding. ,He was an object of no small 
interest, for the breeding season was at hand 
and the nest of this species has never been 
taken and satisfactorily identified. He was so 
tame that I walked to within twenty paces of 
him before he flew, and then he went but a 
short distance. The coloring of his plumage 
suggested tiny waves breaking over a sandy 
shore. He has not the teetering habit to the 
extent that his cousin, the spotted sandpiper, 
has, but he is far from steady in his walk. 
Barn swallows by dozens skimmed the surface 



228 LAND OF THE LINGERING SNOW. 

of the meadow. A few redwing blackbirds — a 
comparatively uncommon bird in this region — 
balanced on the grass and made more noise^than 
their slender numbers justified. A heron rose 
from the farthest end of the meadow and flew a 
distance of more than a mile in a semicircle, 
heading north at first, but ending his journey 
by a flight southward past the base of Chocorua to 
a secluded pond under the shoulder of the moun- 
tain. His measured and majestic flight through 
the haze, against woods, then sky, then blue 
mountain-side, was more like the progress of a 
barge impelled by long, slow-moving oars than 
the hurrying of a bird. The pond to which he 
went is known to few. It is shallow and green, 
swarming with tadpoles and surrounded by 
sphagnum banks above which rise steep and 
heavily wooded slopes. It has no outlet save 
the air, no inlet save the springs which feed it. 
Deer tracks are always thick about its shores, 
and the bear, hedgehog, fox, skunk, mink, and 
gray squirrel are its frequent fourfooted visitors. 
From a high hill, north of the meadow and 
due east of Chocorua, we watched the descend- 
ing sun mark the close of the last day of spring. 
On every side the quiet of the forest surrounded 
us. A house standing near was but an exclama- 
tion mark to the wildness of the scene, for it 
had ceased to be the home of man and had 



CHOCORUA. 229 

become a mere monument of the decay of a 
community. Towards Chocorua the land sloped 
downward until it reached a narrow valley point- 
ing north and south. Then it began to rise, at 
first imperceptibly, then plainly, then more and 
more abruptly, until it became precipitous and 
climbed high against the sky. At its beginning 
this slope, which like the one on which we stood 
was clad in soft birches and poplars, was three 
miles in width, its north and south limits 
being sharply marked by rocky spurs of the 
mountain. As it rose, these buttresses of the 
mountain drew together and nai-rowed it. Fi- 
nally, as it attained to a precipice of bald rock, the 
source of Chocorua River, they came together 
and united their height and strength with its 
ascending mass. Upon the mighty shoulders 
thus formed rested the sharjD horn of Chocorua, 
three thousand feet above the slender valley at 
its feet. We were so near to this mountain wall 
that it seemed to cover half the western sky. 
The haze concealed all its details of rough forest 
and stained precipice, leaving it a blue barrier 
crowding its jagged outlines into a golden sky. 
Through this sky, towards the edge of the lofty 
horn, the red sun was drifting and sinking. It 
did not seem far away, but so near that it might 
strike upon that menacing ledge of rock, and 
fall shattered, down, forever down, into an end- 



230 LAND OF THE LINGERING SNOW. 

less abyss on the farther side. As the sun sank 
lower and lower, nearer and nearer to Chocorua, 
it seemed to me that it was marking a crisis in 
the year, and that when it came again — if come 
it ever did from the abyss behind that wall — 
the tide of life would have changed and begun 
its slow and certain ebbing. Vegetable and ani- 
mal life seemed to have gained the point of their 
greatest beauty and activity. The leaf could be 
no fairer ; the flower was already falling and the 
formation of the fruit begun ; the nest was built, 
the Qgg laid, in many cases the young bird was 
already stirring his wings for flight ; and in the 
secret places of the mountain the young of the 
bear, the deer, and the fox had long been afoot. 
The sun reached the edge of rock and passed 
behind it. In the deep Chocorua Valley the day 
was over and the song of the hermit was yielding 
to that of the whip-poor-will, the flight of the swal- 
low was giving way to that of the bat. Would 
the life of that valley be any less happy on the 
opening of the season of ripening than it was at 
the close of the season of growtli ? Surely not, 
for there is nothing in nature which is apprehen- 
sive of that period of rest, which for the flower 
is called winter, and for the butterfly, death. It 
is man alone who dreads the downward swing of 
the pendulum, the ebbing of the tide, the pause 
in the endless rhythm of life. 



INDEX. 



Agamenticus, 58. 

Alder, 3, 53, 103, 167, 170, 175, 221. 

Alewife Brook, 52, 122, 128. 

Anemones, 131, 142, 196, 225. 

Ants, 77, 206. 

Arlington, 1, 6, 12, 25, 29, 35, 38, 

40, 52, 53, 73, 78, 91, 127, 179, 180. 
Arnold Arboretum, 35, 36. 
Ash, 57, 221. 
Assabet River, 133, 146, 166-174, 

197. 
Asters, 2, 7. 
Azalea, 192. 

Ball's Hill, 102, 146, 147. 
Balsamfir, 210, 221,223. 
Barberry, 2-4, 8, 28, 35, 45, 117, 124, 

203. 
Bat, 230. 
Bearberry, 55. 
Bearcainp River, 150, 209. 
Beaver Brook, 31, 33, 73, 123, 124, 

159-161. 
Bedford, 47, 48, 102, 147. 
Beech, 46, 154, 175, 192, 195, 224. 
Bees, 172, 2U6. 
Bellevue Hill, 36. 
Belmont, 1, 25, 31, 33, 34,44,52, 73, 

110, 127, 176. 
Berkshire Hills, 194. 
Birch, 2, 7, 29, 109, 111, 113, 150, 156, 

175, 179, 191, 192, 211, 229. 
Bittern, 146-148, 159-163, 176-178, 

181-186. 

Blackberry, 179, 191, 221. 

Blackbird, 52, 55, 84, 147 ; cowbird, 
99, 116, 124, 130, 133, 200; purple 
grackle, 73, 90, 113, 123, 133 ; red- 
wing, 52, 69, 74, 78, 89, 100, 101, 
108, 112, 116, 123, 130, 107, 168, 

176, 228 ; rusty grackle, 74. 
Bloodroot, 123, 124. 
Blueberry, 220. 

Bluebird, 42, 43, 48, 51, 53, 56, 75, 
78, 101, 105, 124, 120, 141. 



Blue-eyed grass, 225. 

Blue Hill, 28, 29, 35, 36, 46. 

Blue jay, 35, 39, 41, 48, 205. 

Bobolink, 168. 

Boon Pond, 171, 172. 

Boston, 1, 19, 26. 

Brookline, 34. 

Brown creeper, 9, 15, 33, 39, 45, 

56, 76. 
Bussey Woods, 34, 37. 
Buttercup, 15, 38, 51, 55, 131, 142, 

2C0, 205. 
Butterflies, 76, 206. 
Buttouball, 90, 111, 125. 

Caddis-worra, 68. 

Cambridge, 1, 52, 74, 110, 122, 126, 

K5, 190. 
Cape Cod, 83-95. 
Carlisle, 102, 105, 147. 
Catbird, 167, 176, 199, 212. 
Caterpillar, 55, 206. 
Cedar, 1, 4, 5, 9, 11, 14, 16, 17, 39, 

43, 45, 56. 
Cedar-bird, 17, 28, 33, 51, 124. 
Charles River, 26, 31, 39, 56, 118, 

124, 197. 
Checkerberry, 96, 196. 
Cherry, 191, 192, 209, 225. 
Chestnut, 3, 8, 117, 198. 
Chewiuk, 147, 160, 173. 
Chickadee, 4, 9, 16, 18, 19, 33, 35, 

39, 41, 45, 48, 55, 56, 76, 99, 108, 

140, 171. 
Chimney-swift, 152, 168, 201. 210- 

212, 215. 
Chipmunk, 36, 77. 
Chocorua, 150, 151, 155, 157, 211, 

230. 
Chokeberry, 191 , 210. 
Clematis, 161. 

Cliutonia, 191, 190, 221,225. 
Clover, 225. 
Club moss, 55. 
Columbine, 140, 145, 196. 



232 



INDEX. 



Concord, 34, 47-49, 52, 73, 100, 130, 

133, 197. 
Concord Turnpike, 74, 110, 127, 161. 
Corema, 92. 
Cornel, 210, 225. 
Corydalis, 55, 
Cow-lily, 225. 
Cranberry, 63, 84. 
Crescent Beach, 23, 24. 
Cricket, 187, 212. 
Crocus, 32. 
Crow, 3, 4, 9, 12, 15, 18, 19, 23, 33, 

39, 41, 45, 48, 51, 55, 64, 80, 89, 

96, 108, 117, 140, 149, 154, 176, 182, 

200, 222. 
Cuckoo, 199. 

Dalibarda, 221. 

Dandelion, 123, 131, 142, 164, 191, 

Deer, 150, 219, 220, 228. 

Dove, domestic, 19; mourning, 147. 

Dover, 115. 

Duck, 94 ; black, 01-69, 97, 104, 108, 
146, 182, 187 ; sheldrake, 103, 104, 
141 ; whistler, 21 ; wood, 125, 146. 

Dunes, 59-72, 87-92, 149. 

Eagle, 149. 

Elder, 192. 

Elm, 2, 11, 41, 46, 49, 101, 144, 198. 

Everlasting, 131, 142. 

Fairhaven Bay and Hill, 132-140, 

197. 
Ferns, 35, 54, 57, 123, 161, 210, 221. 
Fitchburg, 190-194. 
Five-finger, 51. 
Fleur-de-lis, 225. 
Forget-me-not, 198. 
Fox, 2, 42, 102, 150. 
Fresh Pond, 52, 110-114, 122, 123, 

127. 
Frog, 78, 135, 138, 151, 176, 212, 

224. 

Geranium, wild, 205. 
Golden plover, 92. 
Goldenrod, 2, 7. 
Goldfinch, 2, 16, 18, 88, 105. 
Goldthread, 221. 
Goose, wild, 90, 91. 
Great-crested flycatcher, 213, 227. 
Great meadows (Concord), 102-106, 

146. 
Greylock, 194. 
Grouse, 33, 36, 40, 55, 57, 76, 80, 

103, 119, 138, 140, 147, 227. 
Gull, black-backed, 62 ; herring, 21, 

23, 53, 62, 67, 70, 84, 89; kittiwake, 

95. 



Harvard University, 1, 36, 122. 

Hawk, 9, 39, 140 ; broad- winged, 
223; marsh, 106, 140; red-shoul- 
dered, 35, 74, 103, 148 ; sparrow, 
53, 112, 123, 124, 127, 

Hawthorn, 191, 225. 

Heard's Island and Pond, 144-146. 

Hell's Bottom, 93. 

Hemlock, 36, 37, 113, 155. 

Hepatica, 54, 78, 80. 

Heron, 147, 228. 

Highland Light, 85-94. 

Highland Station, 31. 

Hill's Crossing, 122. 

Hobble bush, 196, 221, 225. 

Hog Island, 69, 71. 

Honeypot Hill, 166, 167, 171. 

Horned lark, 68, 91. 

Horsechestnut, 123, 131, 176. 

Horsetail-rushes, 123. 

Houstonia, 131, 142, 149, 173, 191. 

Hudsonia tomentosa, 63, 69, 87, 88, 
92. 

Humming bird, 154. 

Indian relics, 64, 91. 
Indigo bird, 199. 
Ipswich, 59-70, 150. 

Jack-in-the-pulpit, 207. 

Junco, 74, 79, 100, 106, 151, 196. 

Juniper, 3, 4. 

Kearsarge, Mt., 58. 
Kendal Green, 41, 42. 
Kingbird, 162,201, 226. 
Kingfisher, 123, 124, 126, 146, 147. 
Kinglet, golden-crested, 4, 16, 33, 

35, 39, 55, 56 ; ruby-crowned, 122, 

140, 146. 

Lady's slipper, 191, 225. 
Larch, 220, 221. 
Laurel, 191. 

Least flycatcher, 130, 201. 
Lexington, 18, 53, 78, 81. 
Lilac, 130, 172, 176, 212. 
Lincoln, 40, 41. 
Linnsea, 225. 
Locust. 76, 118, 206. 
Loon, 152, 158. 
Lynn, 21, 26. 

Maple. 29, 80, 111, 114, 122, 128, 131, 
150, 153, 156, 175, 192, 195, 217. 

Marsh marigold, 149, 150, 163. 

Massachusetts Bay, 26, 57. 

Meadow lark, 53, 89, 95, 99, 116, 123, 
1G8. 

Meadow-sweet, 63, 



INDEX. 



233 



Medford, 12, 25, 127. 
Memorial HUl, 11, 27, 197. 
Marrimac River, 27, 208. 
Middlesex Fells, 1, 25, 20, 39, 127. 
Minute -Man, 49, 98, 99, 109, 130, 

146, 148. 
Mole, 106. _ ^^ ^^, 

Monadnock, Mt.,28, 36, 46, 57, 194, 

196. 
Moth, 76. 

Mount Auburn, 27, 73, 12., 197. 
Mount Pisgah, 39, 40. 
Mmntain ash, 195. 
Mouse, 3, 28, 33, 35, 40, 42, 68, 71, 

1013. 
Mullein, 51. 
Musketaquid River, 98-109, 131, 

133, 197. 
Muskrat, 43, 74, 76, 108. 
Mystic Pond, 38, 39, 91. 

Nashua River, 190, 196. 
Neponset River, 26, 28, 29. 
Night-hawk, 210. 
Nobscot Hill, 143, 165, 106, 171. 
Nuthatch, 16, 45, 98, 99, 222. 

Oak, 8, 9, 11, 13, 29, 31, 32, 46, 86, 

96 101, 105, 124, 150, 174, 195, 198. 
Old Mxnse, 49, 98, 109, 130, 148. 
One Pine Hill, 40, 54, 78, 79. 
Orchard, 48, 66, 96, 101, 174,198-207. 
Orchid, 221, 225. 
Oriole, Baltimore, 101, 166, 169, 172, 

204. 
Osprey, 148. 
Ossipee, 150, 209. 
Otter, 76. 

Ovenbird. See Warbler. 
Owl, 102, 106; Acadian, 51, 52; 

barred, 77, 201, 219, 224, 225 ; 

great-horned, 134-140 ; screech, 

147. 



Partridgeberry, 39, 55. 

Passaconaway, Mt. , 155. 

Paugus, Mt., 155. 

Payson Park, 73, 126, 127. 

Pegan Hill, 115-119. 

Pewee, phoebe, 45, 120, 145, 211, 

213 ; wood, 1P9. 
Pine, 8, 9, 13, 60, 84, 102, 156, 194, 
221 ; pitch, 10,39, 88, 96, 101, 150, 
172; white, 40, 119, 134, 138, 172, 
226. 
Piping hyla, 77, 78, 176, 178, 212. 
Pipsissewa, 55. 
Point of Pines, 21, 24. 
Polygala, 210, 225. 



Poplar, 93, 131, 150, 154, 156, 191, 

217, 220. 
Potentilla, 131,142, 196, 205. 

Privet, 3, 4, 8, 202. 

Prospect Hill, 55, 50, 57. 

Provincetown, 84, 85, 87, 88, 92, 95. 

Puffball, 65. 

Purple finch, 45, 110, 130. 

Pyrola, 55. 

Quail, 3, 8, 35, 40, 45, 48, 73, 200. 

Rabbit, 3, 8, 35, 36, 40, 42, 54. 

Rattlesnake plantain, 55. 

Rgadville, 28. 

Redstart. See Warbler. 

R-^vere Beach, 20, 208. 

Rhodora, 192, 225. 

Robin, 4, 6, 9, 16, 17, 28, 35. 45 53, 

56, 73, 95, 99, 123, 130, 140, 142, 

167, 188, 195, 199, 204, 213. 
Rockbnttom, 165. 106. 
Rock Meadow, 73, 74, 159, 161,176, 

179, 181. 
Rose-breasted grosbeak, 201, 204, 

205, 222. 
Rosebush, 3, 4, 51, 63. 

Sandpiper, spotted, 148, 226; soli- 
tary, 227. 
Sandwich, 83. 
Sarsaparilla, 196. 
Saugus River, 21, 26, 208. 
Saxifrage, 131, 142, 145. 
Scarlet tanager, 193, 199. 
Seaweed, 24, Gl, 89. 
Shell-heaps, 64. 
Shrike, 95. ^^ „_ 

Skunk, 35, 42, 66, 67, 95, 211. 
Skunk-cabbage, 32. 54, 80. 
Skunk currant, 196. 
Snake, 77, 96^, 174, 211. 
Snipe, 177, 178, 188. 
Snow bunting, 23. 
Snowfleas, 4, 33, 108. 
Solomon's seal, 55, 196 210. 
Sparrow, chipping, 11 >, 1-3, 1-*, 
14-^ 151, 171, 200, 214; English, 
20,24,41,73,101,111,112; field, 
117 140, 142, 151, 172 ; fox, 45, 
54 57, 102, 106, 107, 108, 112; 
grassfinch, 116, 151 ; Ipswich, 67, 
88; song, 51, 53, 73, 78, 81,95, 
112, 130, 140, 189, 214; swamp, 45 ; 
tree, 16, 29, 33, 41, 48, 51, 53, <6, 
78, 79, 90, 91. 
Spider, 55, 70. 
Spruce, 56, 155. 
Spy Pond, 52. 



234 



INDEX. 



Squirrel, 3, 8, 35, 36, 49, 54, 77, 80, 
211. 

Starflower, 191, 210. 

Stony Brook, 41, 43, 114, 197. 

Stow, 171. 

Strawberry, 196. 

Sudbury River, 120, 133, 142, 197. 

Sumac, 4, 8, 42, 43. 

Swallow, 141, 142, 150, 174, 230; 
bank, 143, 168 ; barn, 143, 151, 
168, 201, 212, 227 ; eaves, 143, 
168 ; martin, 133, 143, 168 ; wliite- 
bellied, 116, 120, 123, 143, 151, 168. 

Tamworth Iron Works, 150. 
Thrush, brown, 139, 140, 167, 191, 

199; hermit, 107, 142, 157, 210, 

212, 230; veery. 167, 200, 207, 

217, 222. 
Tom Coddies, 68. 
Trailing arbutus, 96, 150, 152, 1-96, 

225. 
Tree toad, 212. 
Trillium, 152, 191, 207, 225. 
Trout, 216, 221. 
Truro, 84-97. 

Tudor Place, 110-114, 122, 123. 
Turkey Hill, 40, 54. 
Turtle, 75. 
Twisted stalk, 196. 

Uncanoonucs, 28, 58, 195. 
Uvularia, 152, 225. 

Veery. See Thrush. 
Veratrum, 221. 

Violet, 142, 145, 191 , 198, 210, 225. 
Vireo, red-eyed, 191,201, 212; soli- 
tary, 146, 201, 217. I 

Wachusett, Mt., 28, 36, 80, 81,98, I 
190-197. 



Walden Pond, 197. 

Waltham, 31, 43, 55, 124, 197. 

Warbler, 169 ; black - and - white 
creeping, 154, 170, 173, 201, 222 
Blackburn's, 217 ; black-poll, 197 
black-throated blue, 161, 173, 222 
black-throated green, 146, 173 
201, 220 ; Canada flycatcliing, 217 
223 ; chestnut-sided, 101, 173, 212 
Maryland yellow - throat, 217 
Nashville, 154, 196 ; ovenbird 
173, 191, 193, 201, 212, 222 
parula, 142, 223 ; pine-creeping, 
110, 142, 150, 170, 171, 173 
redstart, 106, 169, 170, 173, 200 
212; water thrush, 148,217,222 
yellow red-poll, 117, 173 ; yellow- 
rumped, 90, 91, 169, 173 ; yellow, 
170, 173. 

Watercress, 15, 32, 38, 123. 

Waverley, 18, 31, 55, 73, 159. 

Waverley Oaks, 73, 123, 124, 126, 
160, 197. 

Wayland, 143, 144. 

Wayland Elm, 144. 

Wellesley, 118, 120. 

West Roxbury, 34. 

Whip-poor-will, 140, 212, 230. 

Whiteface, Mt., 155. 

Willow, 3, 4, 9, 10, 34, 41, 46, 52, 
101, 111, 128, 161, 173, 188, 189, 
198. 

Winchester, 38, 39, 127. 

Woodchuck, 77, 149. 

Woodcock, 81, 82, 157. 

Woodpecker, 147 ; downy, 29, 36, 
55, 76, 98, 116, 154, 201. 203; 
golden-winged, 35, 48, 53, 69, 76, 
112, 117, 123, 124, 126, 152, 201, 
203 ; yellow-bellied, 154, 217, 218. 

Wren, house, 202 ; short-billed 
marsh, 187 ; winter, 222, 223. 



